CORRUPTION ERADICATION IN INDONESIA'S FREE NUTRITIOUS MEALS (MBG) PROGRAMME: RISK MAPPING AND AN INTEGRITY FRAMEWORK
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Free Nutritious Meals, Corruption Eradication, Procurement Integrity, State Financial Loss, Anti-Corruption Policy
Abstract
This study examines the eradication of corruption within the Free Nutritious Meals (Makan Bergizi Gratis, MBG) programme launched as one of the national government's flagship social policies, and asks how Indonesia's anti-corruption architecture can be adapted to protect a large-scale, decentralised food-procurement scheme from systemic leakage. Employing a normative-juridical method supported by a qualitative case study and documentary analysis of statutory instruments, audit findings, and secondary literature, the research maps the typical corruption vulnerabilities of mass feeding programmes and evaluates the adequacy of existing preventive and repressive mechanisms. The findings indicate that the principal risks are concentrated in vendor selection, price mark-ups, quantity and quality manipulation, and weak beneficiary verification, and that these risks are amplified by the programme's speed of roll-out, its multi-tier disbursement chain, and fragmented oversight. The study concludes that a hybrid strategy combining digital procurement transparency, real-time beneficiary data, strengthened inter-agency coordination, and a recovery-oriented enforcement posture offers the most realistic path to safeguarding public funds without paralysing programme delivery. Its academic contribution lies in extending the doctrine of state financial loss and procurement integrity to a novel welfare context and in proposing an integrity framework that reconciles rapid social-policy implementation with the constitutional imperative of corruption eradication.
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