Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s ambitious plan to introduce free school meals nationwide to tackle child malnourishment has sparked concerns about its potential drag on the country’s finances.
Prabowo’s team is hoping to address these concerns by looking to countries such as Japan, China and India, which have implemented and spent prudently on such programmes.
Analysts warn that Indonesia faces multiple economic and logistical challenges that would make it difficult for Prabowo to adopt the regional models.
The free school meal programme was one of the key election campaign promises of Prabowo, who will take over from President Joko Widodo in October.
The 72-year-old defence minister has said the scheme offering school students free lunches and milk was a “necessity” to curb child malnourishment in the country.
Data from the country’s health ministry shows 21.6 per cent of Indonesian children under the age of five experienced stunting – stunted growth and other developmental problems caused by malnutrition.
Prabowo hopes the free meal programme will help reverse this trend. Most Indonesian schools do not provide free food to students. His programme envisions free meals for 83 million underprivileged children and is estimated to cost 71 trillion rupiah (US$4.35 billion) in 2025.
Prabowo’s team estimates the initiative will cost up to 450 trillion rupiah (US$27 billion) when it is fully implemented in 2029 and boost economic growth by 2.6 percentage points.
To achieve this, Prabowo is said to be considering measures including tightening tax enforcement and cutting the budget for Widodo’s US$32 billion capital relocation project.
The meal programme has been criticised by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which say it would raise the country’s budget deficit level.
Prabowo’s team has promised to meet the legal debt limits requiring Indonesia’s budget deficit to be capped at 3 per cent of gross domestic product. Jakarta has set a deficit target of 2.3 per cent for this year.
Muhammad Rafi Bakri, a data and financial analyst at the Audit Board of Indonesia, said that the programme would require a “very significant” budget. Cost concerns were warranted since Indonesia has large expenditures in the pipeline including the capital relocation, he added.
Successful models
Indonesia is expected to look at cost management by regional countries that have implemented such programmes.
In Japan, government data shows nearly 99 per cent of primary schools provided lunch to students in 2023. The meals are not always free of charge, with some students paying an average of 50,000 yen (US$300) annually but many municipalities fully subsidise these costs.
In September, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will host Indonesian officials in Nagasaki prefecture to train and help them understand Japan’s century-long experience of providing school meals.
“Nagasaki shares the island characteristic with Indonesia, making it an ideal setting,” JICA said in a statement to This Week in Asia.
“Through this initiative, JICA seeks to support Indonesia in addressing its nutritional challenges, drawing on Japan’s extensive experience while respecting Indonesia’s unique needs and circumstances.”
During his visit to Beijing in March, Prabowo reportedly visited a school in the capital’s Dongcheng district to learn about its free lunch programme for students.
In April, vice-president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka told state news agency Antara that an Indonesian team was sent to India to understand the country’s free lunch programme.
Gibran said the Indian ambassador to Indonesia, Sandeep Chakravorty, informed him that India’s programme costs 11 US cents per child per day because of logistical efficiencies. In comparison, the Prabowo team estimates a cost of 94 US cents per child per day for the Indonesian programme.
According to Josua Pardede, chief economist at Permata Bank in Indonesia, the Chinese and Indian programmes are tailored according to local requirements and factors.
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“China’s free meal policy began in 2011 and is not universal, it is very well-targeted, aimed only at the poor in remote rural areas,” Pardede said. Its programme started in several remote villages before it was expanded over the years, he added.
In India, funding for the programme to provide daily lunches to over 100 million students was shared between the central and local governments, Pardede said.
First launched in 1995, India’s programme cost about US$2.6 billion in 2023, in which the federal government and the state governments pay 60 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.
Rafi said India and China could run their programmes successfully as they grew much of the food for domestic consumption. In Indonesia, food production would typically fluctuate from year to year and any shortfall would have to be met through imports, he added.
Indonesia ranked 84th out of 113 countries in terms of food availability, way behind India in 42nd place and China in 2nd place, according to the 2022 Global Food Security Index.
Concerns about Indonesia’s capacity to fund the programme were valid due to Indonesia’s weak financial position and heavy economic dependence on commodities, whose prices were typically volatile, Pardede said.
“This situation alarms investors because … the policies to boost state revenue and reduce the current account deficit remain inadequate.”
