BPNT Operations Assessment 2019

• by Elwyn Panggabean, Frenky Simanjuntak, TVS Ravi Kumar, Karthick Morchan and Rahmi Yunaningsih
• Feb 6, 2019
• 1 min
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Bantuan Pangan Non-Tunai (BPNT) is one of the largest digitized social assistance payment (government-to-people or G2P) programs in Indonesia.

Government of Indonesia, as part of its long term plan to digitise all G2P programs, transformed the existing in-kind food subsidy program, called Rastra or Beras Sejahtera, to a direct transfer of the subsidy amount to the bank account of the beneficiary. The initial rollout was started back in 2017 in 44 cities/regencies and expanded to 118 cities/regencies across multiple provinces/islands in Indonesia. The Ministry of Social Affairs of Indonesia (MoSA) intends to target a total of 15.6 million beneficiaries in 2019. MicroSave Consulting as per the request from MoSA, initiated a study to evaluate BPNT operations implementation. This evaluation is a follow up to the evaluation that MSC did for BPNT in 2017. Using a mixed method approach by interviewing 2,398 beneficiaries and 779 e-warongs/agents in 93 regencies/cities in Indonesia, the study reports key issues in the operations, feedback and satisfaction of the beneficiaries and e-warongs to the program implementation, including some policy recommendations to MoSA for future implementation.

In addition, the study also analyses the role of digitizing G2P programs on financial inclusion and key barriers for low income beneficiaries to enter the digital economy.