Logistical nightmare, fiscal challenges – and Indonesia’s stunted children – await President-elect Prabowo’s landmark free meal initiative

Some 70.5 million people stand to benefit from Indonesia’s free meal initiative. But first, the programme has to reach the stunted children and pregnant women scattered across more than 17,000 islands in the vast archipelago nation.

SOE, Indonesia: On paper, the Indonesian regency of South Central Timor is fertile ground for incoming president Prabowo Subianto to kickstart one of his key campaign promises: Providing free meals to all pregnant women and children across the world’s fourth-most populous nation.

The regency is located in the remote interior of one of the least developed provinces in Indonesia: East Nusa Tenggara. Its dry, rocky soil is unfit for most crops while its rugged terrain is unsuited for large-scale cattle breeding.

South Central Timor's prevalence of stunting is also among the highest in the country, something that Mr Prabowo has promised to tackle with his free meal initiative. At 50.1 per cent, the rate is more than twice the national prevalence of 21.5 per cent, according to a 2023 survey by the Indonesian health ministry.

“We hope Prabowo will prioritise this village for his free meal programme,” said 28-year-old Yustina Misa, whose twin children are diagnosed with stunting, a form of malnutrition that inhibits children’s growth and mental development.

04:03 Min

Indonesia's incoming president Prabowo Subianto has promised to provide free meals to all pregnant women and children across the world’s fourth-most populous nation. But the 70.5 million beneficiaries are scattered across 17,000 islands across Indonesia and reaching them is no easy task.

But for the past four months, Mr Prabowo and his campaign officials have chosen to conduct trials in more developed cities and provinces with lower rates of stunting, such as Jakarta and its three neighbouring cities, Bogor, Bekasi and Tangerang.

Mr Budiman Sudjatmiko, an advisor for his campaign, explained that since Mr Prabowo is not yet president and thus does not have access to state budgets or resources, the team can only conduct trial runs in major cities where volunteers and donors are abundant.

Currently the defence minister, Mr Prabowo will succeed Mr Joko “Jokowi” Widodo as Indonesia’s president on Oct 20.Mr Bhima Yudhistira, director of the think tank Centre of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), said it is important for Mr Prabowo to stage a trial run in remote areas like South Central Timor.

 Conducting a trial run in underdeveloped regions of Indonesia, he argued, will increase understanding of the logistical challenges of moving goods across the vast archipelago.

“Logistics will be one of the biggest challenges for Prabowo’s free meal programme, particularly if he wants to distribute perishable food to the outer islands and remote parts of Indonesia which have little to no infrastructure,” he told CNA.

Some regions in Indonesia, like in the remote jungles of Papua, are only accessible by small airplanes, he noted. The shipment of goods to small islands in the outer regions of Indonesia is not only expensive and takes a long time, but also depends on sea conditions.

“Which is why the price, for example, of rice in Java is around 15,000 rupiah (US$0.99) per kilogramme but in Papua, it can reach 40,000 or even 50,000 rupiah per kilogramme,” he said, referring to Indonesia’s most and least developed regions, respectively.

HIGH COST OF SHIPPING GOODS

Indonesia ranked 63rd out of 139 countries in the World Bank's 2023 Logistics Performance Index, scoring poorly in infrastructure and logistics competence.

Shipping goods in Indonesia is so expensive that logistics costs in the country could be up to 23.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), far higher than the global average of 15 per cent. 

Experts say the root cause is the economic and infrastructure disparity between Indonesia's more developed western regions like Java and Sumatra, and eastern regions like the five Papua provinces and East Nusa Tenggara. 

Java, where the current capital Jakarta is located, is home to three of the biggest shipping ports in the country. Cities on the island are also connected by 1,776 km of toll roads, or 61 per cent of the total length of toll roads in the country.

In contrast, nearly half of the 3,446 km of roads in the five Papua provinces are not even paved. Some areas are accessible only by air or on foot. 

Meanwhile, most of the goods flowing to East Nusa Tenggara, a chain of islands which borders the Indian Ocean, rely on ferries from Java's Surabaya city which arrive around once a week.

Logistics will be the free meal programme's biggest challenge, some observers have noted. 

"Never mind sending food to schools, the students and teachers in the far corners of this country themselves sometimes have to risk their lives to get themselves educated: From crossing the river using a raft to dangling on a bridge that is on the verge of collapsing to go to school," news outlet MetroTV wrote in an Aug 21 editorial.

Mdm Eliza Mardian, a researcher at the Center of Reform on Economics think tank echoed the sentiment, highlighting the fact that many beneficiaries live in remote places with poor transportation access. 

"The high cost of transportation might balloon the overall budget for the programme because in places like East Nusa Tenggara, there are produce like rice and beans which have to be transported from their production hubs in Java," she told CNA.

Mr Budiman of Prabowo’s campaign said his team is aware of the logistical challenges involved in distributing free meals to far corners of Indonesia and is deliberating ways to overcome them. One way, he said, is to maximise the potential of local food production.

“This programme will utilise (local) villages as agricultural production hubs. Doing this will not only reduce distribution and logistics cost but also contribute to the local economy,” he said.

SOME AREAS ILL-SUITED FOR FARMING

But not all regions in Indonesia are fit for farming.

In South Central Timor, the number of stunting cases is highest in the suburbs of the regency’s capital, Soe. In these villages, farmlands have mostly disappeared, replaced by cheap housing for low-income families.

Meanwhile, the rest of the regency is poorly suited for certain crops because of Timor island’s dry climate, rocky soil and mountainous landscape.

According to data from the regency’s agricultural agency, South Central Timor only produces around 10,000 tonnes of rice a year, about a-tenth of what the other 414 regencies in Indonesia are capable of producing.

The regency is more suited to grow corn, but its annual output of 293,000 tonnes is still far below the 700,000 tonnes of corn per year produced by some regencies in Java.

South Central Timor, which has a population of 474,000, also has to rely on neighbouring regions for meat.

“Beef is expensive and out of reach for most people. As for fish, we are so far from the sea we might need to rely on preservatives and they will no longer be fresh by the time they get here. The most affordable and widely available sources of protein are chickens and eggs,” Mdm Karolina Tahun, chief of the regency’s health agency, told CNA.

For the past nine years, villages in South Central Timor have been trying to improve residents’ nutritional intake by providing free meals to pregnant women and children with stunted growth, similar to what Mr Prabowo is planning to do.

“Because their parents are poor, for most children, (these free meals) are the only time they get to eat meat,” said Mdm Yuliana Fernandes, a volunteer at a community health clinic in Kesetnana village, which has some of the worst cases of stunting in the regency.

Kesetnana village chief, Mr Petrus Liu, said that due to the remoteness of his village, a meal consisting of rice, a hard-boiled egg, chicken, vegetables and fruit costs around 25,000 rupiah (US$1.60), far more than the 15,000 rupiah per meal Mr Prabowo’s team has envisioned.

The village has an annual budget of around 52 million rupiah for the nutrition intervention programme, which means it can only provide meals to around 20 children once a day for a maximum period of 90 days, said Mr Petrus.

There are 182 cases of stunting out of around 500 children under age five in Kesetnana.

“If we were to make interventions to all 182 children with stunted growth, we surely won’t have enough budget and other programmes (in the village) will have to be put on hold,” Mr Petrus said.

“Prabowo’s free meal programme will, for sure, help us a lot.”

ENORMOUS BUDGET NEEDED

Indonesia has earmarked US$4.6 billion for the programme in 2025, the first year of its implementation.

However, the country’s National Development Planning Agency estimated that when in full swing, the initiative may cost Indonesian taxpayers at least US$12 billion annually, equivalent to 5.5 per cent of the country’s total expenditure for 2024.

Mr Prabowo plans to fully implement the programme by the end of his presidential term in 2029.

But if Indonesia spends a significant chunk of its annual budget on free meals, the country would have a harder time mitigating economic shocks like a global financial meltdown or another pandemic, experts say.

“Other expenses must be reallocated to finance the free meal programme. We could see a halt of existing programmes like infrastructure development, which has been the hallmark of Jokowi’s administration,” said Dr Tauhid Ahmad, a senior researcher at the think tank Institute for Development of Economics and Finance.

Professor Dwi Andreas Santosa of the Bogor Agriculture Institute is worried that much of the money will be spent on food imports.

“Indonesia is already importing 250,000 tonnes of beef, and 80 per cent of our dairy consumption is supplied from overseas,” he noted. “The programme will surely create more demand for beef and milk, and the only option then is to increase our imports or risk skyrocketing prices.”

Mr Bhima of CELIOS said Mr Prabowo can reduce costs by focusing on the people most in need of free meals. 

“Right now, even children of upper and middle-class parents in private schools stand to benefit from the programme,” he said. “(Mr Prabowo) should focus on areas where malnutrition is rampant and areas that are underdeveloped and have high poverty rates.”

Mr Prabowo’s team is, so far, adamant that the programme’s benefits outweigh the costs. Several of his team members even predicted that the programme might create 820,000 jobs in the production and distribution of food.

WILL IT BE EFFECTIVE?

An estimated 6.3 million children under the age of five in Indonesia have stunted growth, according to the health ministry.

Stunting not only inhibits physical and mental development but can also increase the risk of conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease.

To prevent stunting, a child needs to be fed nutritious meals for at least 1,000 days from the fetal stage until the age of about two.

Mr Prabowo has promised to provide one free meal per person daily to around five million pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers as well as 65 million toddlers and school children up to grade nine, or between five and 15 years of age.

His team is still deliberating the actual content of the meals. 

Experts are expressing concerns over its possible effect on children, given that the programme does not appear to take into account their economic background, dietary restrictions, eating patterns or whether they are undernourished.

“(The free meal programme) is good for children who are undernourished, but for those who are already well-nourished, we have to be careful so that the programme doesn’t make some children obese,” said Mdm Hasbibah Betty of the Indonesian Nutritionist Association.

Experts also say that providing free meals alone will not be effective in combating stunting. Good child-care practices, access to quality healthcare, hygiene, and sanitation services are also important, they note.

“Prioritising initiatives such as rotavirus vaccinations, micronutrient supplementation for pregnant women and enhancing the skills of community health workers... can significantly contribute to sustainable improvements in public health and well-being,” said Mr Zack Petersen, founder and managing director of the anti-stunting non-profit 1000 Days Fund.

But Mdm Nelci Liu, head of a Kesetnana village volunteer group called Family Welfare and Empowerment Movement, believes that at the very least, the free meal initiative can inspire people to eat healthily.

She has seen pregnant women and toddlers in Kesetnana eating nothing but instant noodles or unhealthy snacks all day and, as a result, the children have stunted growth.

“The problem is not merely about poverty or the inability to buy nutritious food. There are parents with high education and economic backgrounds whose children experience stunting. It’s about the lack of knowledge of what healthy food is,” Mdm Nelci said.

“If children are taught to eat healthily, they can become agents of change and get their parents to serve the same meals as the ones served at their schools. Later on when they grow up, they will get their children to eat healthily too. And that’s a good thing.”

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