Surachman Tjokroadisurjo

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Panji Surachman Tjokroadisurjo (30 August 1894 – 16 November 1952) was an Indonesian politician and academic who played a major role during the Indonesian National Revolution. Born in Wonosobo, he came from a family with ties to the Yogyakarta royal line. He studied at a local school in Batavia, then went to the Netherlands to study chemical engineering at the Delft Institute of Technology, graduating in 1920 as the first Indonesian chemical engineer. After a brief internship in Germany, he returned to the East Indies and led a chemical laboratory in Bandung, working with batik artisans and silversmiths. He supported nationalist causes privately while avoiding open political commitment at first.

In the 1930s he worked in the colonial government’s Economic Department in Batavia. During the Japanese occupation he joined Putera and, in July 1945, became chief of the economic department. After Indonesia proclaimed independence, he was appointed Minister for Economic Affairs (later Minister of Welfare) in the Presidential Cabinet on 19 August 1945, where he promoted cooperative-based economics and said foreign property would be respected. He left this post when the cabinet fell in November 1945.

On 8 December 1945 he was named Minister of Finance in the cabinets of Sutan Sjahrir, a position he kept into the Second Sjahrir Cabinet. As finance minister, he issued the Oeang Republik Indonesia and arranged its exchange for Japanese currency at a rate of 1,000:1. He announced a 45% salary increase for high‑level civil servants and helped launch Indonesia’s first government bonds in April 1946, which quickly attracted most of the targeted funds. He sometimes held government money in suitcases at home. He was replaced as finance minister on 2 October 1946 by Sjafruddin Prawiranegara.

After that, he helped unemployed republican civil servants form a private company following a Dutch offensive in 1947. In 1950 he became the first rector of the University of Indonesia and also lectured at the Bandung Institute of Technology. He died in The Hague in 1952 during a diplomatic mission to negotiate the nationalization of Dutch tin mining. He was married in 1922 and had four children.