Free meals programme to reach Islamic boarding schools in Java from late October

JAKARTA — Indonesia's Free Nutritious Meals programme, known as MBG, will extend to Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren, on the island of Java from the fourth week of October 2026, according to Antara. Coordinating Minister for Food Zulkifli Hasan made the announcement at a press conference in Jakarta on Monday, 19 October.

Zulkifli said the start date was expected to be 25 October. He said the programme would be rolled out across Java in the final week of the month to widen the number of beneficiaries.

Pesantren can submit student data directly to the National Nutrition Agency, known as BGN, for registration as beneficiaries, Zulkifli said. "There are no intermediaries, no brokers. Data goes straight from the pesantren to BGN," he said. He added that distribution would be based on beneficiary data so the programme would be orderly and well targeted.

According to Antara, Zulkifli also said the government was speeding up the activation of Nutrition Service Units, known as SPPG, in disadvantaged, frontier and outermost regions, referred to as 3T. In the first phase, 480 SPPG units had been completed in eastern Indonesia, including Papua, East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku. A second phase, starting on 14 October, had activated 980 new units in 3T areas in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Bali.

Zulkifli said beneficiary data was drawn from several ministries and agencies, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration, and the Ministry of Health for data on children under five. Data is matched by name and address to align records across agencies.

He acknowledged that some eligible recipients had not yet received meals because their data had not entered the system. He said updates to the data were needed so distribution could reach all targets.

Background

The MBG programme is a national free meals scheme run by the BGN. Antara reported that the programme had reached more than 57 million children after two years of the government of President Prabowo Subianto. The report did not give details of how that figure was calculated.

Antara's report does not say how many pesantren are on Java or how many students they have. It also does not give a budget for the Java rollout or say whether the 25 October start date has been confirmed by the BGN.