Coordinating Minister for Food: All Social Assistance and Agricultural Equipment to Be Channelled Through 'Red and White' Village Cooperatives
The government will make the Red and White Village/Neighbourhood Cooperatives (Koperasi Desa/Kelurahan Merah Putih, KDKMP) the main gateway for distributing various state assistance programmes. Everything from social assistance (bansos), agricultural tools and machinery (alsintan), to government subsidy programmes will henceforth be channelled through these cooperatives.
Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan said the policy was decided at a limited meeting led by President Prabowo Subianto on Wednesday (15 July 2026). According to him, the government wants to make the KDKMP the government’s service infrastructure at the village level.
“All government assistance will go through the village cooperatives. The village cooperatives are government infrastructure,” said Zulkifli Hasan, speaking at the National Seminar on Red and White Village/Neighbourhood Cooperatives at the Sasana Kriya Building, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII), East Jakarta, on Thursday (16 July 2026).
Zulkifli, who is familiarly known as Zulhas, said the existence of the KDKMP has often been misunderstood. In fact, the cooperative was established to serve as a node for government services while simultaneously strengthening the village economy.
Beyond serving as the distribution channel for various forms of government assistance, the KDKMP will also act as an off-taker, or buyer, of the produce of farmers and fishers. This step is expected to help maintain price stability, particularly during peak harvest seasons, so that farmers no longer have to sell their harvests at low prices.
On the same occasion, Minister of Villages and Development of Disadvantaged Regions Yandri Susanto dismissed the notion that the presence of the KDKMP would wipe out micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), village-owned enterprises (BUM Desa), or small village shops.
According to Yandri, the KDKMP was in fact designed to build a village economic ecosystem in which players strengthen one another.
“We will build extraordinary collaboration. There will be no mutual elimination or undercutting,” said Yandri.
He explained that the National KDKMP Seminar, organised by the Ministry of Villages together with ten village associations, was the first public forum specifically discussing the cooperative’s operations. He said that until now the government had only conveyed the KDKMP concept on various occasions, without opening a dialogue space involving various elements of society.
“We want this forum to serve as a space for dialogue so that the operations of the Red and White Village/Neighbourhood Cooperatives can be further refined. We want to gather input from the public while also conveying comprehensive information about this strategic programme of the President,” said Yandri.
The seminar also produced a number of recommendations. One of them was support for accelerating the formation and institutional strengthening of the KDKMP as the centre of village economic activity.
The ten village associations also declared their commitment to encouraging village governments to strengthen the KDKMP ecosystem through synergy with BUM Desa, MSMEs, farmers’ groups, fishers, livestock breeders, creative economy actors, and various local economic potentials.
In addition, they encouraged the development of productive businesses in line with the characteristics of each region, capacity building for cooperative managers’ human resources, and the acceleration of digital transformation so that the KDKMP can become a professional, transparent and accountable driver of the village economy.