Indonesia’s free meals plan is in the spotlight as Prabowo prepares to take office

By Dewi Kurniawati

SUKABUMI, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesian sixth-grader Shakila Fitriyani, a day laborer’s daughter who dreams of becoming a doctor, says she prefers going to school these days because she is served free lunch.

“I am happy about the nutritious meal, milk and fruit,” Shakila said in her small house with a tiled roof and bamboo umbrellas in the green highlands of West Java.

“That made me curious to go to school.”

Since January, the 11-year-old has been one of the thousands of students who have received a lunch – for example, consisting of rice with a seasoned, hard-boiled egg, fried vegetables and a carton of milk and a slice of melon.

They are part of a pilot program in the province aimed at fulfilling a campaign promise by new President Prabowo Subianto, a $28 million effort to provide meals to 83 million children and pregnant women nationwide.

But the effort drew criticism from investors and ratings agencies, raising questions about how they could be financed without denting Indonesia’s recently hard-won reputation for fiscal prudence at a time when logistics across the sprawling archipelago remain challenging.

Prabowo, who will take office from incumbent Joko Widodo on Sunday, says the program is crucial to combat stunting, which affects 21.5% of children under five, and can be done within the framework of fiscal prudence be implemented.

To address fiscal concerns, Prabowo has capped first-year spending at 71 trillion rupees ($4.6 billion) to keep the annual budget deficit below the legal cap of 3% of GDP.

However, Eliza Mardian, an economist at the Center of Reform on Economics think tank, said the budget may not be enough, especially because milk Indonesia imports is expensive.

“Given our tight fiscal situation, there is a possibility of a budget increase that will lead to additional debt,” she said. “This will be a financial burden for us in the future.”

If the program requires more food imports, it could also worsen Indonesia’s balance of payments, already a major importer of wheat, rice, soybeans, beef and dairy products.

On the other hand, Prabowo describes the program as one of the main drivers of economic growth, ultimately expected to create an estimated 2.5 million jobs and boost demand for local products.

The president-elect has promised to accelerate GDP growth to 8% from the current 5%.

BUSY KITCHENS

To ensure the broader nutrition campaign gets under way by January, Prabowo, now defense minister, called on Widodo’s government in August to set up a new National Nutrition Agency, led by Dadan Hindayana, the head of his nutrition program.

Initially, 3 million students will receive meals, with the number expected to double by April and reach 15 million by July, Dadan told reporters this month, with at least 5,000 kitchens set to be set up across the country.

They are likely to be modeled on dozens of pilot kitchens that tested the concept for months.

Since the beginning of this year, a kitchen in the city of Sukabumi in West Java has employed about 50 people as cooks, food delivery people, drivers and dishwashers to prepare 3,300 meals a day for 20 schools.

The activity begins before dawn when fresh meals are prepared on a monthly menu designed by a certified nutritionist to maximize the use of locally sourced ingredients, said head chef Pahmi Idris, with a budget of Rs 15,000 per meal.

School staff help track how meals affect the height and weight of students, who typically sit cross-legged on the floor and eat from segmented metal trays.

But the pilot showed that an early task of the program would be convincing children to eat vegetables, Pahmi said, since they, uneaten, accounted for the majority of wasted food.

“We know kids don’t like vegetables,” Pahmi said. “We need to educate them more about eating vegetables.”

Indonesia’s diverse communities and different geography could also make it difficult to set up kitchens across the country, said analyst Izzudin Al Farras Adha of the Jakarta-based Institute for Development of Economics and Finance.

Experts have also said that better nutrition for school-age children comes too late to address stunting, requiring complex remedies, from improved sanitation and hygiene to better maternal nutrition.

But the program’s benefits are real, Sukabumi residents said.

Roby Nurdin, a fruit and vegetable supplier, said the kitchen business had doubled his income and benefited farmers.

And more and more students are coming to class, said Lastri Samtiawati, a teacher at Shakila’s school, who gets her meals from the sukabumi kitchen.

“Students are more active,” she added. “I now understand the direct impact of good nutrition on children.”

($1=15,635 rupiah)

(Reporting by Dewi Kurniawati; Additional reporting by Zahra Matarani and Stefanno Sulaiman in Jakarta; Editing by Gayatri Suroyo and Clarence Fernandez)