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President Subianto Pledges Golden Indonesia with Launch of Free Meals Program

Indonesia’s new government launched an ambitious project this month to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly ninety million children and pregnant women which is expected to cost up to USD 28 billion over the next five years.

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Indonesia’s new government launched an ambitious project this month to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly ninety million children and pregnant women which is expected to cost up to USD 28 billion over the next five years.

By Niniek Karmini and Dita Alangkara

The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on a campaign promise by President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the nation, which has more than 282 million people and is Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

President Subianto says that the program aims to fight the stunting of growth that afflicts 21.5% of Indonesian children younger than five and would raise the income of farmers.

President Subianto has also pledged to accelerate GDP growth to 8% from its current 5%.

In his inauguration speech in October, the President said many children are malnourished. His promise to provide free school lunches and milk to 83 million students at more than 400,000 schools is part of a longer-term strategy to develop the nation’s human resources to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation by 2045.

“Too many of our brothers and sisters are below the poverty line, too many of our children go to school without breakfast and do not have clothes for school,” says President Subianto.

His signature program may cost upward of 450 trillion rupiah (USD 28 billion) by the end of his term in 2029. He said his team has made the calculations to run such a program, and affirms that “we are capable”.

The government’s target is to reach an initial 19.5 million schoolchildren and pregnant women in 2025 with a budget of 71 trillion rupiah (USD 4.3 billion) so as to keep the annual deficit under a legislated ceiling of 3% of GDP, according to the head of the newly formed National Nutrition Agency Dadan Hindayana.

Hindayana says that the money would buy an estimated 6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 million tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetable and fruit, and 4 million kilolitres of milk.

“Nearly 2,000 cooperatives will be involved in the free meals program by providing eggs, vegetables, rice, fish, meat, milk and other food,” says Cooperative Minister Budi Arie Setiadi.

“We will send a team to each school to facilitate the meal distribution to students every day,” says Minister Hindayana, adding that the program will provide one meal per day for each student from early childhood education to senior high school, covering a third of the daily caloric needs for children, with the government providing the meals at no cost to recipients.

According to Reni Suwarso, the Director of Institute for Democracy, Security and Strategic Studies, said the decline in the stunting rate in Indonesia was far from the target of a 14% reduction in 2024.

According to the 2023 Indonesian Health Survey, the national stunting prevalence was 21.5%, down around 0.8% from the previous year. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimated that one in 12 Indonesian children younger than 5 suffers from low weight while one in five is shorter than normal. Both conditions are caused by malnourishment.

“That’s so bad and must be solved. Child malnourishment has severe consequences, threatening the health and long-term development of infants and young children throughout this nation,” says Suwarso.

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