Prabowo Instructs The Acceleration Of MBG, Government Prepares Special Presidential Decree

JAKARTA - The government is drafting a Presidential Regulation (Perpres) to accelerate the implementation of the Free Nutrition Food Program (MBG) with a target of 82.9 million beneficiaries by 2025.

Head of the National Nutrition Agency (BGN), Dadan Hindayana, explained that the regulation was only made because President Prabowo Subianto directly monitored each region, many had not received MBG even though the implementation of this program had been running for more than 4 months.

"Because the President often goes to the regions, he feels sad because more have not been able to accept it (MBG) than those who received it. That's why we need acceleration," he said in his official statement, Sunday, May 11.

In addition, this program was initially still in doubt but after it went smoothly, the government began to rush to accelerate the target of distributing the MBG Program targeting pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, toddlers, and students from PAUD to SMA and students.

"Yes, the name is like this, we have to work, we walk. Then after it was implemented, people initially thought this would not work. Actually, after the road, this must be even faster," said Dadan.

Since its launch on January 6, 2025, the MBG Program has fed 570,000 school children and involved 190 Nutrition Fulfillment Service Units (SPPG) spread across 26 provinces in Indonesia. To date, 1,295 SPPGs have been formed in 38 provinces.

If the MBG program has been fully running, it will take 30,000 SPPGs to achieve the target of 82.9 million beneficiaries. For this reason, an additional MBG budget of IDR 50 trillion is needed from the current budget ceiling of IDR 71 trillion.

In accelerating the development or operations of the SPPG, in addition to using its own budget allocation, BGN also collaborates with various parties such as local governments, ministries/agencies, SOEs, TNI, Polri, and private parties.