Joao Angelo De Sousa Mota has stepped down as president director of state-owned food security firm PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara after only six months in office, citing bureaucratic hurdles within its parent holding, State investment management agency BPI Danantara.

Joao submitted his resignation letter to Danantara on Monday, August 11, 2025, and publicly apologized for not being able to deliver tangible contributions to the national economy or farmers’ welfare during his tenure.

“With deep regret, I apologize to all citizens, especially farmers. Please allow me to submit my resignation and convey my apologies,” Joao said in a press conference in Jakarta.

He criticized Danantara’s complex internal procedures, particularly in budget disbursement for Agrinas.

“Danantara was established to accelerate business activities, not to create excessively long, convoluted bureaucracy that makes it nearly impossible to achieve our goals,” he said.

Danantara CEO Rosan P. Roeslani said the holdingcompany respected Joao’s decision, adding that the company strictly applies good corporate governance in all operations.

“Every corporate action, including at Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, goes through a comprehensive feasibility study and follows applicable procedures,” Rosan said on Monday evening as quoted in a statement.

Rosan emphasized that the company’s ongoing processes aim to ensure decisions are made prudently, sustain performance, and maintain stakeholder trust.

He assured that Agrinas’s operations will continue uninterrupted and that leadership transition will be managed carefully to ensure business continuity.

Priority

Market analyst Yanuar Rizky said Joao’s resignation should be seen in the context of the government’s fragmented approach to agricultural transformation. “The core problem, in my view, is that Danantara has never made agricultural reform a top priority,” Yanuar told Indonesia Business Post on Tuesday, August 12, 2025.

He argued that past administrations had also created new state-owned agricultural firms without integrating or restructuring existing ones.

“Under (7th president) Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, we had new subsidiaries in the fertilizer holding like PT PI Pangan, but progress was slow because we already had similar firms, such as Sang Hyang Sri, burdened by past issues including corruption,” he said.

In the second Jokowi term, the government formed a state-owned food holding. Under President Prabowo, the strategy shifted to repurposing failing construction State-owned enterprises (SOEs) into agricultural firms resulting in Agrinas Pangan.

“There’s no real business process reengineering, no genuine intention to connect investors and farmers,” Yanuar said, adding that broader structural economic reforms for agriculture remain absent.

Indonesia’s economy, he said, remains focused on national strategic projects, downstreaming of natural resources, and concessions for oligarchs.

“That’s what Danantara is serving. This resignation should be viewed through that lens,” he concluded.

Profile

PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, established in February 2025, is part of a government initiative to strengthen food sovereignty. The company is a transformation of former state construction firm PT Yodya Karya, merged under the Agrinas brand alongside Agrinas Jaladri Nusantara (ex-Virama Karya) and Agrinas Palma Nusantara (ex-Indra Karya).

The company’s mandate spans the entire food production chain from land preparation and cultivation to post-harvest processing, storage, and milling.

Agrinas operates under Danantara, the state-owned holding overseeing hundreds of SOEs.