Indonesia will redirect its free-meals budget toward remote and underserved areas while scaling back the construction of new community kitchens.
The shift follows a corruption scandal that led to the arrest of the agency's former leader. This pivot signals a move away from rapid expansion toward tighter oversight of a massive public spending project.
Nanik Sudaryati Deyang, the newly appointed chief of the National Nutrition Agency, said the refocus was announced Thursday, June 4 [5]. The decision comes immediately after anti-graft investigators arrested three officials, including the former head of the agency, on June 3 [3, 4].
Deyang said the agency will now prioritize efficiency over the number of beneficiaries. The program previously targeted 83 million people, but that figure is no longer being prioritized [2]. Instead, the agency intends to ensure resources reach the most isolated villages across the archipelago.
The National Nutrition Agency is managing a substantial budget for 2026, which is nearly $15 billion [1]. By limiting the construction of new kitchens, the agency aims to reduce waste and prevent the types of financial irregularities that prompted the recent arrests.
Officials said the focus on remote areas is intended to address nutritional gaps where government services are least accessible. This strategy marks a departure from the previous administration's goal of maximizing the total number of participants, regardless of location.
“The agency will now prioritize efficiency over the number of beneficiaries.”
The transition from a volume-based target of 83 million beneficiaries to a targeted, efficiency-led model suggests that the Indonesian government is prioritizing political stability and fiscal accountability over the original scale of the program. By narrowing the scope to remote areas, the National Nutrition Agency is attempting to restore public trust in the wake of high-level corruption arrests while still fulfilling the core mandate of the free-meals initiative.
