February 2, 2026 | 09:07 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto again claimed strong results from the Free Nutritious Meal program (MBG), saying it had reached around 60 million beneficiaries as of Sunday night, February 1, 2026, with what he described as an almost perfect success rate.
Speaking at the 2026 National Coordination Meeting of central and regional governments in Sentul, Bogor, West Java, on Monday, February 2, 2026, Prabowo said the program was designed to ensure that all Indonesian children have access to adequate nutrition.
He acknowledged that many had predicted the program would fail and admitted that cases of food poisoning had occurred during its implementation.
“If we compare the number of poisoning cases to the billions of meals we have distributed, the figure is 0.0087 percent,” Prabowo said.
“That means 99.99 percent of the MBG program can be considered successful.”
Prabowo, who also chairs the Gerindra Party, claimed that experts from the White House in the United States have expressed interest in studying the program.
He added that the Rockefeller Institute has described MBG as one of the best investments a country can make.
According to Prabowo, every dollar or rupiah spent on the program generates returns at least five times greater in the short term and up to 35 times in the long run.
The president has repeatedly highlighted the program’s performance. Earlier, during a retreat of the Red and White Cabinet at his private residence in Hambalang, Bogor, on January 6, 2026, he said internal evaluations showed the program’s implementation had reached a 99 percent success rate.
Prabowo emphasized that MBG is a strategic initiative rooted in the state’s responsibility to address child nutrition, citing studies indicating that more than 20 to 30 percent of Indonesian children suffer from malnutrition.
Sultan Abdurrahman contributed to the writing of this article.
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