JAKARTA — Indonesia's new government launched a massive project on Monday to fight malnutrition by feeding 90 million children and pregnant women that is expected to cost $28 billion by 2029, though critics question whether the plan is affordable.
The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on the campaign promise of President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the country, which has more than 282 million people and is Southeast Asia's largest economy. He said the program aims to combat the stunting that plagues 21.5% of Indonesian children under the age of 5 and will increase the income of farmers.
Subianto promised to accelerate GDP growth to 8% from 5% now.
In his inauguration speech in October, Subianto said many children are malnourished. His pledge to provide free school lunch and milk to 83 million students in more than 400,000 schools is part of a long-term strategy to develop the nation's human resources to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation by 2045.
“There are too many of our brothers and sisters below the poverty line, many of our children go to school without eating breakfast and they don't have school clothes,” said Subianto.
Subianto's signature plan could cost more than 450 billion rupiah ($28 billion) by the end of his term in 2029. He said his team did the calculations to run the program, and “We know it.”
The government's goal is to reach 19.5 million school children and pregnant women by 2025 with a budget of 71 billion rupiah ($4.3 billion) to keep the annual deficit under the official ceiling of 3% of GDP, Dadan said. Hindayana, head. of the newly established National Nutrition Agency.
Hindayana said this money will buy approximately 6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetables and fruits, and 4 million kiloliters of milk.
About 2,000 cooperatives will be involved in the free food program by providing eggs, vegetables, rice, fish, meat, milk and other food, said Cooperation Minister Budi Arie Setiadi.
On Monday, a truck carrying food arrived at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the Jakarta suburb of Depok. 740 students were served rice, fried vegetables, tempeh, fried chicken and oranges.
“We will send a team to each school to carry out the distribution of food for students every day,” said Hindayana, adding that the program will provide one meal a day to each student from early childhood education to high school, comprising a third of the students. Daily calorie requirements for children, which the government provides free food to recipients.
But the plan has drawn criticism from investors and analysts over its performance scale, the burden on the state's finances and the economy, and its ties to the interests of lobbying groups.
Nailul Huda, a researcher at the Center of Economic and Law Studies, said that the finances of the Indonesian government are not strong enough to support the program and this will lead to increasing the country's debt.
“The burden on our government budget is very heavy if we are forced to reach 100% of those targets, and it will be difficult for Prabowo's government to achieve the goal of growing the economy by 8%,” said Huda.
He warned that it could worsen the country's external balance of payments, which already imports rice, wheat, soybeans, beef and milk.
Reni Suwarso, the director of the Institute for Democracy, Security and Strategic Studies, said that the rate of unemployment in Indonesia is still far from the target of 14% reduction by 2024.
According to the 2023 Indonesia Health Survey, the prevalence of depression nationwide was 21.5%, down about 0.8% from last year. The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that one in 12 Indonesian children under the age of five is underweight and one in five is shorter than normal. Both conditions are caused by malnutrition.
“That is very bad and must be resolved,” said Suwarso. “Child malnutrition has serious consequences, threatening the health and long-term development of infants and young children across the country.”
– Associated Press reporters Edna Tarigan and Andi Jatmiko contributed to this report.
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