Palace Says Future Funding by SOEs Possible for Free Nutritious Meal Program

11 hours ago 9

January 21, 2025 | 08:06 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Spokesperson Philips J. Vermonte said that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) could participate in funding the free nutritious meal program in a few years time.

“Once it’s developed in a few years, people and private sectors may participate later [in funding],” Philips told reporters after monitoring the program implementation at a school on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.

The free meal program, he explained, is not envisioned in a multi-year plan, but in multi-decades. Hence, the source of the funding will be expanded after a few years. “The local economies, citizen support, corporations, or even SOEs,” he said.

Entering the second week of the free meal program, the Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs, Zulkifli Hasan, said the government currently has Rp71 trillion left to fund the free meal program, which will last until mid-year 2025. The minister said an Rp420 trillion budget is required to run the program for a whole year.

The head of the National Nutrition Agency, Dadan Hindayana, has also said that the biggest source of funding for the free nutritious meal program comes from the state budget. To run the program, it costs Rp800 billion per day or about 75 percent of the total daily expenditure of the National Nutrition Agency of Rp1.2 trillion.

Since January 6, the free nutritious meal program has been implemented nationwide in 31 provinces. Until April 2025, the government targets 932 free nutritious food kitchens to serve at least 3 million students.

From April to August, the government aims to serve up to 6 million people through the operation of 2,000 service units.

By year-end, the government aims to serve 15 million people, with 5,000 free nutritious meal’s public kitchens operating in 514 districts across the country.

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