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In northern Jakarta Bay, a region with the highest prevalence of growth stunting and malnutrition in Indonesia’s capital, about 160 first graders excitedly grab their free school lunches on a hot September day.
The meals are part of a government-run pilot programme after President-elect Prabowo Subianto, who takes office on Oct 20, promised free school lunches as part of his successful campaign. The goal: cut stunting rates, boost educational outcomes in a nation where almost a quarter of the population is under the age of 15, and power up economic growth to 8% a year.
The focus on soft infrastructure is a contrast with predecessor Joko Widodo, who prioritised roads, rail and bridges, and the mineral export industry, with gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 4.2% in his 10-year term. While economists and investors applaud the ambition, it’s the price tag and risks in delivering the programme without waste and corruption that has them concerned.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati set aside 71 trillion rupiah (US$4.6 billion, or RM19.67 billion) for the lunch programme in the 2025 budget, with costs set to climb after that as the rollout broadens. The eventual US$30 billion-a-year outlay is equivalent to 14% of Indonesia’s entire 2024 budget, and about 2.5 times more than its yearly health expenditure.
Prabowo’s plan will cost five times the amount that India, which runs the world’s largest midday meal scheme, spent in 2023. That programme is rife with corruption scandals and allegations of poor hygiene — challenges that Indonesian authorities will need to avoid.
A recent extension of the programme to include pregnant mothers suggests spending could climb even further in future years, “which could put upwards pressure on the fiscal deficit in the absence of reprioritisation of spending programmes,” said Martin Petch, whose role as vice president and senior credit officer at Moody’s Ratings makes him the lead analyst for Indonesia’s sovereign rating.
Prabowo has sought to allay fiscal fears with funding for the programme within the government’s deficit cap of 3% of GDP in the 2025 budget, as the government seeks to cut down on waste and other non-essential spending. Details on funding plans after that have yet to be announced.
Kim Eng Tan, a S&P Global Ratings analyst in Singapore, says “continued commitment to fiscal prudence will be important” as the programme expands.
Former general Prabowo says his free meal programme is about keeping the nation’s children healthy and competitive, amid rapid technological advances and competition with other countries’ workforces. “This is not a matter of being liked, of gaining popularity. This is a matter of strategy,” he said recently in a forum.
Nearly one in three children under the age of five in the vast archipelago of 275 million people is considered too small for their age. Poor nutrition and school attendance means Indonesian students score lower in mathematics, reading, and science than peers, and their performance is deteriorating.
Improving educational outcomes will be key to helping Indonesia — which currently boasts economic output of roughly US$4,800 per person, making it an “upper middle income” country, according to the World Bank — emulate neighbours and climb up the development ladder.
Economies that have “escaped the middle-income trap, such as Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan, all have pretty good soft infrastructure,” said Rob Subbaraman, head of global macro research at Nomura Holdings. “So, it’s a good move by Indonesia, but they shouldn’t suddenly forget about the physical infrastructure.”
Prabowo has also promised to renovate schools across the country, provide free medical check-ups, and expand various other social aid programmes. To pay for it all, he’s aiming to double the country’s tax revenue ratio — from around 10% currently — by reforming the tax system and boosting non-tax revenue. Investors and economists are awaiting more details on those plans, once Prabowo is in office and settles on his cabinet line-up.
Thomas Rookmaaker, head of Asia-Pacific sovereigns at Fitch Ratings, says reaching developed nation status by 2045 — another of Prabowo’s targets — “seems challenging without major productivity-enhancing reforms, or significantly higher government spending and a build-up of government debt.”
Of all Prabowo’s campaign pledges, it’s the lunch programme that gained the most attention, given its vast scale. And not everyone is sold on the idea.
Muhammad Rafi Bakri, an analyst at the Audit Board of Indonesia, wrote in a report in April that the lunch plans “may not be a silver bullet” for Indonesia’s stunting problem, and raised concerns over the sustainability of funding the programme. India’s free lunch programme, Bakri pointed out, is also supported by non-profit organisations — something that’s unlikely to happen in Indonesia’s case.
For other analysts, the potential boost to both the near- and long-term outlooks, outweighs such concerns.
“In the short term, this initiative could stimulate economic activity and create growth opportunities for companies in the consumer staples sector,” said Mohit Mirpuri, a fund manager at Singapore-based SGMC Capital Pte Ltd, who is “bullish” on the nation. “A healthier, more educated workforce is the bedrock of productivity and innovation, making Indonesia an attractive market for long-term investors.”
Malaysia’s current account balance will improve this year as well as in 2025 after hitting a 26-year low in 2023, thanks to exports, tourism activities, and investment, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) said.
Current-account surplus — a measure of how much more foreign currency a country receives than it spends — may rise to RM43.4 billion in 2024 and RM49.1 billion in 2025, its Economic Report showed. As a percentage of gross national income (GNI), the surplus will widen to 2.3% in 2024 and 2.4% in 2025.
“Robust trade activities are projected to contribute to a surplus in the goods account, while the services account is anticipated to post a narrowing deficit attributed to vigorous tourism activities,” said the MoF. “The income accounts are forecast to continue recording net outflows resulting from a ramp-up in investment activities.”
A larger current-account surplus also typically leads to an appreciation of a country’s currency as it is also an indication that it produces and sells more of its goods than it buys from overseas.
In comparison, current-account surplus stood at RM28.2 billion or 1.6% of GNI — the lowest since 1997 — as both exports and export earnings declined amid sluggish external trade, global technology downcycle, and lower commodity prices.
In the first half of 2024, the current-account surplus in the balance of payments recorded RM19.2 billion or 2.1% of GNI driven by the goods account, as well as smaller deficits in both the services and income accounts.
The momentum is expected to continue into the second half of the year, with the current account surplus expanding to RM24.2 billion or 2.4% of GNI thanks to narrowing deficit in the services and income accounts despite a smaller surplus in the goods account, said the MoF.
The goods account is expected to register a moderate surplus of RM115.1 billion in 2024 — weighed by surging imports that more than offset the rise in exports of manufactured, agriculture and mining goods — before climbing to RM125.6 billion in 2025, MoF’s projection showed.
Nonetheless, the services account is forecast to record a deficit of RM20.4 billion in 2024 following improvements in the travel account as well as narrowing deficit in the transport account and other services account. Next year, the services account deficit may shrink to RM16.8 billion.
The primary income account is projected to register a slimmer deficit of RM48.8 billion in 2024 — owing to a smaller deficit in the investment income account, albeit with a higher deficit in compensation of employees — and narrow to RM56.5 billion in 2025.
This Dutch proverb applies to the implementation date of the EU Deforestation Regulation, which was originally scheduled for the end of 2024. From that date onwards companies would have had to prove that certain commodities destined for the internal market are not connected to recent deforestation.Over the past year, there have been repeated calls for a delay from a broad range of stakeholders including EU trade partners, industry organisations, and politicians in member states like Germany and Austria. The EU Commission’s proposal to delay the implementation date to 30 December 2025 is the most tangible outcome of that pressure. While this proposal still needs to be approved by the EU Parliament, it is a disappointing outcome to many, including farmers and companies that were (almost) ready. For example, for companies that already contracted more expensive compliant commodities it remains to be seen whether they can still sell them at a premium.
Updated timeline for the implementation of the EU deforestation regulation*
In the debate around the EUDR, it’s clear that the stakes are high from both an environmental and an economic perspective. As we've highlighted before deforestation is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. The EU's agricultural imports that are in scope of the regulation amount to 70 billion euros, but only a small part carries a risk of recent deforestation. The regulation also affects EU companies that process these commodities into consumer goods and export them to countries outside of the EU, and it affects EU producers of the raw materials that are in scope of the regulation (mainly the forestry sector).
EU imports of commodities and derived products in scope of EU deforestation regulation equal €70 billion
Over the past year, different stakeholders have brought forward a range of concerns, which can be grouped as follows.
Implementation challenges. Companies have complained about limited guidance and documentation from the EU Commission and expressed concerns about the suitability of the IT system that they need to use to submit data on shipments.
The position of smallholders. NGOs and exporting countries stress that in the current set-up, there is a risk that larger companies will exclude smallholders from their supply chains.
Legal and trade-related concerns. The regulation requires geolocation data to be shared to ensure that commodities can be traced back to a specific plot of land, which can be problematic if that is not allowed under national regulation. Meanwhile, multiple countries, including Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia consider the EUDR a technical barrier to trade.
Administrative burden and costs. It requires more paperwork to prove that products put on the EU market cannot be linked to (recent) deforestation.
In our view, more time can certainly help to overcome the implementation challenges. The EU Commission did share additional guidance last week and the dedicated IT system will soon be available for companies. Given that preparation was in full swing, we expect that additional time will also ensure that companies’ best practices become more widely known.When it comes to the position of smallholder farmers, more time does give more opportunities to inform them about the requirements. But knowing what is required has limited value if you lack the means to become compliant. So besides time, financial and technical support to smallholders is just as important. While this is also acknowledged by the Commission, it takes time for funds to trickle down to farmers and cooperatives.
Concerns around trade barriers and legal issues are more fundamental and more difficult to resolve with just extra time. The EU has more influence when it is the main buyer of exports, such as cocoa from West Africa. However, for products like beef from Australia and Brazil or soy from the Americas, where the EU is not the primary trading partner, it is harder for the EU to set higher standards on its own. That also explains why the EU proposes to intensify the dialogue with the other countries concerned.
And finally, more time will not solve the issue of the administrative burden. It’s simply the downside of steering markets in the desired direction. Still, as time passes, companies will also go through a learning curve in terms of how to comply with the regulation in an efficient way.
For now, a lot of the uncertainty in the market around the EUDR is gone. The proposal to start applying the law from 30 December 2025 onwards seems likely to be approved by the European Parliament before the end of the year. After all, there was very strong support in the EU parliament, as well as the European Council for the law back in 2023. Still, some politicians might see the vote as a way to make changes to the regulation. That may not be very likely at the moment, but we have seen some last-minute political turns in the EU’s environmental legislation over the past few years so it cannot be completely ruled out either. This means all eyes will be on members of the European Parliament when they cast their vote on the proposal to extend the implementation date.
Meanwhile, deforestation continues. And with a delay in the EUDR implementation date, we fear that many crucial initiatives to reduce deforestation will be on hold at least until EU lawmakers shed more light on the final direction that the EU is taking.
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