Jakarta. Multinational corporations are seeing dollar signs on President-Elect Prabowo Subianto’s free meal program, according to a top brass at the Bank of America.

The government has agreed to set aside around Rp 71 trillion (almost $4.6 billion) to feed school children free and nutritious lunches in 2025, which will be Prabowo’s first year in office. While the school lunch trial is underway, the government has set sights on officially starting the program in January. Mira Arifin --the Indonesia country executive at Bank of America-- said it would be best for the government to also involve multinational companies in the megaproject, considering their production capacity and technologies.

“It has been already decided [that Prabowo will implement the free meal program]. It is already budgeted for 2025, and that’s massive. But the key is to look at how that is being executed,” Mira said in an interview with The Jakarta Globe on Tuesday.

“This program is great because it is providing nutritious meals for the country’s next generation. They are our future. I have had discussions with some of our clients who are multinational corporations, and of course, they would like to tap into the opportunity,” Mira said.

Mira, however, refused to disclose the names of these interested investors, although she said that Bank of America’s clients mainly comprise multinational corporations. She added that Prabowo’s signature program could also be a boon to domestic producers. 

“In terms of money wise, there is opportunity --obviously not only for multinational companies-- but also for local companies. Perhaps they [local companies] will be pushed to create more milk facilities,” Mira said.

Prabowo is banking on the free lunch program to cut down the country’s nationwide stunting rate, among others, as the populous Indonesia sought to unlock what it calls a “golden era”. Indonesia dreams of becoming a high income economy by its centennial in 2045. Indonesia’s stunting rate had dropped to 21.6 percent as of 2022, but the government wants to bring it down further to 14 percent by the end of this year. 

State-owned food holding ID Food not long ago revealed that it would partner with milk producer Frisian Flag for the free meal program. However, ID Food’s president director Sis Apik Wijayanto told the House of Representatives at the time that they were still exploring the potential cooperation for a milk production technology with Frisian Flag, meaning that they have yet made a final decision. Frisian Flag is part of the Netherlands-based milk giant FrieslandCampina.

Prabowo, who has promised continuity of the incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s policies, is set to assume office in October. Jokowi’s eldest son Gibran Rakabuming Raka will be his vice president. 

Since stepping down from his Solo mayor job, Gibran has stopped by some Indonesian schools to check on the school lunch trial runs. The trial run seeks to help the government find the best possible scheme to serve kids nutritious meals while sticking to the budget. Each meal is capped at around Rp 15,000 with the menu usually comprising the Indonesian staple food rice, chicken, vegetables, fruit, and milk. The government has tried slightly lowering the spending to Rp 14,900 in some of the trial tests.

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