Indonesia on Monday kicked off an ambitious 4.2 billion euro free meals program to combat stunting due to malnutrition, a key election promise of President Prabowo Subianto.
Prabowo, who succeeded Joko Widodo in October, pledged to provide free nutritious meals to tens of millions of schoolchildren and pregnant women, saying it would improve their quality of life and boost economic growth.
“This is historic for Indonesia, which for the first time is carrying out a national nutrition program for toddlers, students, pregnant and lactating mothers,” presidential spokesperson Hasan Nasbi said on Sunday evening.
At least 190 kitchens run by third-party catering services have opened nationwide, the majority private or some run by military bases.
“I’m happy because the food was delicious… I can concentrate more when I study,” Khalifa Eldrian, a young student at a primary school in East Jakarta, told AFP after finishing his platter composed of rice, chicken, vegetables and a banana.
The government allocated the modest sum of 10,000 rupees (0.59 euros or $0.88 Canadian) per meal. The overall budget of the program is 71,000 billion rupees (4.2 billion euros) for the 2025 financial year with the ultimate objective of providing meals to nearly 83 million people by 2029.
The program aims to combat stunting, which affects 21.5% of children in the vast archipelago of some 282 million inhabitants. Indonesia hopes to reduce this rate to 5% by 2045.
In Bogor, not far from Jakarta, staff began working around the clock just after midnight. “We serve different menus every day, it has to be different so that the children don’t get bored,” said staff member Ayu Pertiwi.
Even on a limited budget, she says she will be able to serve nutritious meals such as eggs and fish, although meat will likely only be served twice a month.
“We can always create different menus, but the options are limited. For us, the most important thing is that the meal is nutritious,” she added.
Campaign promises
Prabowo strongly defended this program during his presidential campaign. The poorest and most isolated regions of the Southeast Asian archipelago will be prioritized, his team said.
But the first tests carried out at the end of 2024 were mainly in urban centers and the evaluations have not been made public, noted Tan Shot Yen, a nutritionist and doctor based in Jakarta.
The government must be transparent and ensure strong food safety management to prevent dangers and the use of unhealthy processed products, such as instant noodles and sausages, she also stressed.
“I hope this program is not just a temporary charitable effort to fulfill political promises,” she said.
“In the long term, the government should focus not only on funding but also on empowering communities so that (beneficiaries) are not simply dependent on free meals once a day while struggling to find food for the other two daily meals,” she said.
Soon after coming to power, Prabowo visited several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, to seek financial support.
In China, during his first visit as president in November, he reached an agreement of 10 billion dollars (9.7 billion euros) with his counterpart Xi Jinping for support in several sectors, notably for this program free meals.
However, some analysts are skeptical about the long-term viability of the ambitious program.
“I am rather pessimistic if everything is assumed by the central government. Economically, this is not sustainable, Aditya Alta, an analyst at the Indonesian Policy Studies Center in Jakarta, told AFP. Stunting is a multidimensional problem and it cannot be solved by a single approach.”
