Free Lunch Program

THE decision by President Joko Widodo and his ministers to start making preparations for the free lunch program is a reckless way of managing state funds. Because it will cost so much, the free lunch program for schoolchildren will have a negative impact on many existing programs and other budget items that are more important. And as well as being prone to corruption, it is not certain that the free lunches will bring as much benefit as the programs that will have to be eliminated to pay for them.

The government has already included the free lunch program in the 2025 State Budget. No amount of funding for the project, which was a campaign promise of presidential and vice-presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, was agreed yet. But initial calculations by a number of ministries point to a high cost that could lead to an increase in the budget deficit.

According to calculations by the National Development Planning Ministry, for example, the free lunch and milk program will cost Rp185.2 trillion per year. Meanwhile, the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy has mentioned a value of Rp257.2 trillion, assuming 70.5 million recipients and a cost of Rp15,000 per portion per day. Calculations by the Prabowo-Gibran National Campaign Team have produced an even larger figure: Rp450 trillion per year.

Whatever the basis of the calculations, the free lunch program will cost a lot of money. With a figure of hundreds of trillions of rupiah per year, the cost of the program will be equal to or even higher than other budget items such as social security, infrastructure construction, education or energy subsidies. Therefore, there is bound to be rearranging of other budget items in order to accommodate this program that is the pride of Prabowo and Gibran, the candidates supported by Jokowi.

And this is where the problem lies. The government will be under pressure to reallocate the budgets of items that are really important if it wants to avoid the deficit rising. This has already been seen when Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto proposed a reallocation of funding for school operational assistance (BOS). Looking at the scale of priorities, BOS is more important because it is aimed at reducing the costs of education, including paying the salaries of honorarium teachers.

The formula by the National Development Planning Ministry, which will use energy subsidy funds to pay for the free lunch program, also needs to be re examined because there are still subsidies that are needed to reduce electricity tariffs and energy bills for poorer households. If this funding disappears, the country will face the threat of a sharp rise in inflation and the poverty rate as a result of a rise in the cost of living.

Leaving the side the advantages and disadvantages, the allocation of budget funds for the free lunch program by the Jokowi government is both hasty and a violation of the ethics of governance. It is not right that a president and his ministers start making arrangements for the programs of a presidential candidate when that candidate has not even been named as the election winner. It is only fair to suspect that this is political maneuvering to find favor with the next president in order to obtain positions in the forthcoming government.

Therefore, the president and his ministers should stop these improper actions. The free lunch program should be cancelled in order to avoid increasing the deficit and wasting state funds, which a number of institutions have warned about, including the World Bank. Not only that, this program will also bring many opportunities for corruption. Cancelling the program is the only rational option.