JAKARTA — Indonesia’s new government launched an ambitious $28 billion project on Monday to feed some 90 million children and pregnant women to fight malnutrition and disability even as critics question whether the program is nationally accessible.
The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on the campaign promise of President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the nation of more than 282 million people and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. He said the program is aimed at combating the stunted growth that afflicts 21.5% of Indonesian children under the age of five and will increase farmers’ wages and the value of their crops.
Subianto promised to accelerate GDP growth to 8% from 5% now.
In his inauguration speech in October, Subianto said many children are malnourished and his promise to provide free lunch and milk to 83 million students in more than 400,000 schools nationwide is part of a long-term strategy to improve the nation’s human resources for a “Golden Indonesia” generation ” in 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 program, which included free milk, would cost more than 450 million rupiah ($28 billion). He said his team did the calculations to run the program, and he said, “We know it,” he said.
The government’s goal is to reach 19.47 million school children and pregnant women by 2025 with a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.3 billion) to keep the annual deficit under the official ceiling of 3% of GDP, said Dadan Hindayana, head of the Department. the newly established National Nutrition Agency.
Hindayana said the money will buy approximately 6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 million tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetables and fruits, and 4 million kiloliters of milk, and at least kitchens 5 000. up in the whole country.
On Monday, a truck carrying about 3,000 meals arrived before lunch at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the Jakarta suburb of Depok. 740 students were served plates with rice, stir-fried vegetables, tempeh, fried chicken and oranges.
“We are sending a team to each school to facilitate 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 senior high school, which includes a third of the students. Daily calorie requirements for children, which the government provides free food to recipients.
But this populist plan has received criticism from investors and analysts, from the conflict with the interests of lobby groups in the industry or the overall measure of needs, to the financial burden and the economy of the country of Indonesia.
An economic researcher at the Center of Economic and Law Studies, Nailul Huda, said that since Indonesia’s financial situation is strong, the government’s finances are not strong enough to support the financial burden and this will lead to an increase in the government’s debt.
“That cannot be compared to the impact of a free food program that can be misdirected,” said Huda, “The burden on our government budget is very heavy if it is forced to reach 100% of the target recipients, and it will be difficult for the Prabowo government to achieve the goals of economic growth by 8 %.
He warned that it could worsen the country’s external balance of payments, which already imports rice, wheat, soybeans, beef and milk.
But Reni Suwarso, the director of the Institute for Democracy, Security and Strategic Studies said that the level of instability in Indonesia is still far from the goal of reducing it by 14% by 2024.
According to the 2023 Indonesia Health Survey, the national prevalence of depression was 21.5%, down about 0.8% compared to the previous year. The United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF estimates that one in 12 Indonesian children under the age of five is wasted and one in five is disabled.
Wasting refers to a child’s low weight for height, while deficiency refers to a child’s low height for age. Both conditions are caused by malnutrition.
“That is very bad and must be resolved!” Suwarso said, “Child malnutrition has serious consequences, threatening the health and long-term development of infants and young children throughout the country.”
– Associated Press reporters Edna Tarigan and Andi Jatmiko contributed to this report.
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