Hindayana said the money would buy an estimated 6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 million tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetable and fruit, and 4 million kiloliters of milk, and at least 5,000 kitchens would be set up across the country.
On Monday, a truck carrying about 3,000 meal portions arrived before lunch at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the Jakarta satellite city of Depok. The 740 students were provided plates containing rice, stir-fried vegetables, tempeh, stir-fried chicken and oranges.
“We send a team to each school to facilitate the meal distribution to students every day,” Hindayana said, adding that the programme will provide one meal per day for each student from early childhood education to senior high school levels, covering a third of the daily caloric needs for children, with the government providing the meals at no cost to recipients.
But the populist programme has drawn criticism from investors and analysts, ranging from conflation with the interests of industrial lobby groups or the sheer scale of the logistics required, to the burden on Indonesia’s state finances and economy.
Economic researcher from the Center of Economic and Law Studies, Nailul Huda, said with Indonesia’s tight fiscal condition, state finances are not strong enough to support the fiscal burden and this will lead to additional state debt.
“That is not comparable to the effect of free meals programme which can also be misdirected,” Huda said, “The burden on our state budget is too heavy if it is forced to reach 100 per cent of the target recipients, and it will be difficult for Prabowo’s government to achieve the economic growth target of 8 per cent.”
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-launches-free-meals-feed-children-pregnant-woman-president-prabowo-subianto-campaign-promise-4839811
