Government Tightens Risk Management to Prevent Food Project Failures

The government is tightening risk management in the implementation of various national strategic projects, particularly in the food, energy, and water sectors. This step is being taken to ensure that President Prabowo Subianto’s priority programmes do not end in failure despite being supported by substantial budgets.

Deputy Coordinating Minister for Food Hanif Faisol Nurofiq stated that the government is now optimising the implementation of Cross-Sector National Development Risk Management (MRPN LS), coordinated by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas).

“The government considers that a large budget does not guarantee success if governance and risk control are not implemented consistently,” Hanif said in a statement on Friday (26/6/2026).

Hanif explained that the implementation of MRPN LS is mandated by Presidential Regulation Number 39 of 2023. Under this scheme, the Coordinating Ministry for Food is tasked with coordinating and controlling a number of national priority programmes. These programmes include the Free Nutritious Meals (MBG), the Merah Putih Village and Sub-district Cooperatives, the Merah Putih Fishermen’s Villages (KNMP), Waste-to-Energy Processing (PSEL), and various other strategic projects in the food, energy, and water sectors. “All of these require cross-sector consolidation,” he said.

He acknowledged that several major government projects in the past, including those in the food, energy, and water sectors, have not fully achieved the expected results. Consequently, President Prabowo has requested that all ministries and agencies strengthen risk mitigation measures so that project implementation is more measurable and avoids failure. According to Hanif, the government’s focus is now on strengthening governance, transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness in the implementation of programmes involving multiple ministries and agencies. “Because the success of a programme and project is not guaranteed by a large budget. It is not,” he stated.

As a follow-up, the Coordinating Ministry for Food is pushing for the MRPN LS matriculation to serve as a common reference document in the implementation of national priority programmes. The document is expected to form the basis for risk mitigation and be translated into binding policies. This will allow the implementation of each programme to be monitored more objectively and measurably. “Everyone can control precisely and measurably the level of success and the potential for failure at any given time,” Hanif concluded.