Indonesia launches free meals program to combat stunting: NPR

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s new government on Monday launched an ambitious $28 million project aimed at feeding nearly 90 million children and pregnant women to combat malnutrition and stunting, although criticism ask if the national program is affordable.

The free nutritious meals program fulfills a campaign promise by 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 aimed to combat stunting which affects 21.5 percent of Indonesian children under 5 and would increase farmers’ income and the value of their crops.

Subianto pledged to accelerate GDP growth from the current 5% to 8%.

In his inauguration speech in October, Subianto said many children were suffering from malnutrition and that his promise to provide free school meals and milk to 83 million students in more than 400,000 schools across the country was part of a longer-term strategy to develop the country’s human resources to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation by 2045.

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

Subianto’s flagship program, which included free milk, could cost more than 450 trillion rupiah ($28 billion). He said his team had done the calculations to implement such a program and “we are capable of doing it,” he said.

The government’s goal is to reach 19.47 million schoolchildren and pregnant women in 2025 with a budget of 71 trillion rupees ($4.3 billion) to keep the annual deficit below the legal ceiling of 3% of GDP, declared Dadan Hindayana, head of government. Newly created National Nutrition Agency.

Hindayana said the money would purchase about 6.7 million tonnes of rice, 1.2 million tonnes of chicken, 500,000 tonnes of beef, 1 million tonnes of fish, vegetables and fruits and 4 million kiloliters of milk, and that at least 5,000 kitchens would be installed. all over the country.

On Monday, a truck carrying around 3,000 meal portions arrived before lunch at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the satellite town of Depok in Jakarta. The 740 students received plates containing rice, stir-fried vegetables, tempeh, stir-fried chicken and oranges.

“We send a team to each school to facilitate the daily distribution of meals to students,” Hindayana said, adding that the program will provide one meal per day to every student, from early childhood to high school, covering a third of the school population. . daily caloric needs of children, with the government providing meals free of charge to beneficiaries.

But the populist program has drawn criticism from investors and analysts, ranging from confusion with the interests of industry lobby groups or the scale of logistics required, to the burden on finances and the economy of the Indonesian state.

Nailul Huda, an economics researcher at the Center for Economic and Legal Studies, said that with Indonesia’s tight fiscal situation, the state’s finances are not strong enough to bear the fiscal burden, which will lead to a additional public debt.

“This is not comparable to the effect of the free lunch program which can also be misdirected,” Huda said. “The burden on our state budget is too heavy if it is forced to reach 100% of the target beneficiaries, and it will be difficult for Prabowo’s government to achieve the 8% economic growth target.

He warned that it could also worsen the country’s external balance of payments, which is already a major importer of rice, wheat, soybeans, beef and dairy products.

But Reni Suwarso, director of the Institute for Democracy, Security and Strategic Studies, said Indonesia’s stunting rate is still far from the target of a 14% reduction in 2024.

According to the 2023 Indonesian Health Survey, the national prevalence of stunting was 21.5%, down about 0.8% from the previous year. The United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF estimates that one in 12 Indonesian children under the age of 5 suffer from wasting and one in five are stunted.

Wasting refers to a child’s low weight for height, while stunting refers to a child’s short height for age. Both conditions are caused by malnutrition.

“This is so serious and needs to be addressed!” Suwarso said: “Childhood malnutrition has serious consequences, threatening the long-term health and development of infants and young children across this country. »