JAKARTA - Researcher at the Center for Macroeconomics and Finance at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) Riza Annisa Pujarama said the benefits of the Free Nutrition Food (MBG) program would be known in the long term.

"The benefits of this Free Nutrition Food (MBG) will be known from the long term," Annisa said in a virtual public discussion held in Jakarta, quoted by Antara, Wednesday, January 29.

For the impact of the MBG program in the short term, one of which is to encourage the level of student attendance, so it is hoped that they will get more learning and be more useful in the future.

Regarding the effect of improving nutrition from nutritional intake, especially to overcome stunting for pregnant women who are about to give birth to children, this impact can only be seen in the long term after changes in dietary habits through the MBG program.

This can only be seen not from the short term, especially to see the benefits of stunting for pregnant women when their children are born. This long term means the output it produces," he also said.

The MBG 2025 program stage begins in the January-April period with 3 million beneficiaries and a Nutrition Service Fulfillment Unit (SPPG) 937 implementing units, April-August as many as 6 million beneficiaries with 2 thousand implementing units of SPPG, and August-December with a total beneficiaries of 15-17.5 million people and 5 thousand SPPG.

He also explained that the budget requirement for the MBG program was quite large with the condition of the strict 2025 State Budget (APBN).

Moreover, the 2025 State Budget requires very large financing, because debt is due and interest has soared to Rp1,353.2 trillion. This is considered a very tough challenge, because state tax revenues are still very limited with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continuing to slow down.

After experiencing various changes in the cost of food packages per person, he said again, the budget requirement for the MBG program in the 2025 State Budget was agreed to be IDR 71 trillion, which has the potential to increase.

If it is calculated according to the target number of beneficiaries of 82.9 million people, then the MBG program fund needs are IDR 215.54 trillion. This figure does not include operational costs and others.

"This figure is around Rp215 trillion, this is certainly very large for the state budget, because in the 2025 state budget the figure is greater than capital expenditure which is only Rp190 trillion. Then it is also bigger than spending on social assistance issued by the central government," said Annisa.

With such a large budget requirement, he said, additional funding for this program can be done by utilizing the large portion of other expenditures in the 2025 State Budget, which is 21.46 percent.

The government is said to have planned other expenditures, including being used for social assistance from the President and Vice President, operational expenditures for institutions that do not yet have their own budget, anticipation of fiscal risk, support for food security, and payment of government obligations.

"So actually the budget from MBG and the additional budget proposed by the ministry may come from here, but maybe only a little can be given for those programs," he said.

Several other suggestions for budgeting for MBG program financing are collaborating with private parties and philanthropic institutions so that the burden of the APBN is not so heavy, collaborating with existing activities with matching output to reduce stunting and improve health and education.

There needs to be collaboration between ministries and institutions because each ministry, such as for example the Ministry of Health, there is a program for providing nutrition to toddlers, for pregnant women, things like that can actually be collaborated. Or for example, other social assistance that is intended for the same thing, such as food assistance for education, so that children can eat, there are PKH (Family Hope Program) and all kinds of things. So, there needs to be re-runuted the programs and what can be collaborated to increase financing from MBG," said Annisa.


The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)