Jakarta. The Business Competition Supervisory Commission, or KPPU, recently revealed that they would keep an eye on the tender process for vendors who get to work on President Prabowo Subianto’s school meal program.

Early this week, the government kicked off the free nutritious meal program in schools, which aims to make sure that kids in class are not learning on an empty stomach. This program is also one of Prabowo’s campaign promises and has an overarching goal of bringing down the national stunting rate. With tens of millions of mouths to feed under this school-feeding program, the government is working with small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to prepare the meals. Indonesia has also set up hundreds of public kitchens for this nutritional intake improvement program that also targets expectant mothers. 

KPPU chair M. Fanshurullah Asa said that the school meal program required its attention due to its scale. This program involves many enterprises, thus the need to make sure that they are competing healthily.

“If there are MSMEs in this program, we want to see how the logistics work. How does [the government] distribute the meals and involve the MSMEs,” Fanshurullah said in Jakarta on Wednesday, as reported by the state news agency Antara.

“So we can make sure that the business competition is truly healthy, starting from the auction mechanism, tender, pricing, supply chain up to the distribution,” Fanshurullah said.

When the meal distribution began on Monday, the government announced they had partnered with 140 MSMEs. The state budget allocation to run the free meal program in 2025 stood at Rp 71 trillion or around $4.4 billion. The cost per meal stands at Rp 10,000, although the kitchen unit in East Jakarta’s Pulo Gebang revealed they had a Rp 15,000 budget per portion.

This program aims to reach 15 million individuals by the end of this year, and will gradually increase to 82.9 million people in 2029.

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