The World Bank Group in Indonesia
Chapter 4 | The World Bank’s Support for Stronger Human Capital
Highlights
The World Bank’s support in health, nutrition, and social protection was relevant and effective—stunting dropped, health coverage reached 98 percent, and the conditional cash transfer program expanded to 10 million families.
The World Bank strategically sequenced its support in health and social protection to expand its human development engagement, starting with core diagnostics, followed by advisory services and analytics, and then lending. This approach worked: diagnostics identified key issues, 43 percent of advisory services and analytics informed national strategies, and more than 50 percent led directly to lending.
The government adopted the World Bank’s convergence model for reducing stunting, which promoted high-level leadership, cross-sector alignment, and community-based tools to drive coordinated action. Consequently, stunting rates dropped from 37 percent in 2013 to 21 percent in 2022, with the largest gains after the model’s adoption in 2018.
The World Bank used Program-for-Results to promote an outcome-oriented approach, enable vertical and horizontal alignment across government, and overcome line ministry borrowing restrictions in health and education by channeling funds through the Ministry of Finance. It used investment project financing to provide closer oversight and build institutional capacity, complementing areas where Program-for-Results projects were less well suited, and a development policy loan to establish institutional mandates for nutrition.
In education, the government’s decision to cease borrowing for basic education, including due to the mandatory education spending limit to 20 percent in 2009, meant that five lending operations worth $860 million were dropped. Instead, the World Bank continued its engagement with the Ministry of Religious Affairs to improve the education quality for 15 percent of the student population, including vulnerable groups.
Government Priorities and Challenges
Vulnerabilities to human capital development remained despite progress in poverty reduction in past decades. At the beginning of the evaluation period, in 2013, national poverty stood at 11.4 percent (based on $1.90 per day, 2011 purchasing power parity; World Bank 2014b), down significantly from 23 percent in 1999. However, the country continues to face high levels of stunted growth among children younger than five years of age, low learning-adjusted years of schooling, and weak health outcomes, all of which contributed to a Human Capital Index score of just 0.53 in 2017 and 0.5 in 2020 (World Bank 2020b). The poorest 40 percent of the population in terms of income of Indonesians remained disproportionately vulnerable to low human capital and exposed to economic shocks, food price volatility, and health-related out-of-pocket expenditures (World Bank 2015b).
Recognizing these challenges, the government followed several reform initiatives to tackle malnutrition, improve education and health outcomes, and promote anti-poverty programs. In the area of nutrition, Indonesia demonstrated regional leadership by spearheading the ASEAN initiative on ending all forms of malnutrition, with a strong focus on tackling stunting through multisectoral strategies and community-based interventions. The education strategy has emphasized improving equitable access to quality education by taking a student-centered approach, reforming the curriculum to focus on foundational skills and increasing flexibility, improving learning assessment, strengthening teaching quality, and making stakeholders accountable for student learning. In health, the government scaled up efforts to deliver universal health coverage through the National Health Insurance Program (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional; JKN), while also prioritizing maternal and child health services and improving the delivery of primary health care. In social protection, key reforms focused on expanding the coverage and integration of major programs such as conditional cash transfers (Family Hope Program [Program Keluarga Harapan]; PKH) and food assistance (Bantuan Pangan Non Tunai) while investing in delivery systems to improve targeting, payment digitization, and shock-responsiveness.
Relevance of World Bank Engagement in Support of Human Capital Development
The World Bank’s support for human capital and anti-poverty efforts in Indonesia has evolved with the country’s development context and institutional landscape. The FY13–15 CPS prioritized targeting social protection to poor people and vulnerable populations by piloting new approaches, expanding access to quality health and education services, and strengthening poverty reduction programs—all while maintaining a strong community-driven approach to enhance local inclusion and accountability. To operationalize these priorities, the CPS committed to unifying social assistance programs, piloting targeting systems such as the Unified Database, improving health care delivery for poor people through reforms to JKN, and expanding the community-driven development platform (the National Program for Community Empowerment [Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat]) to strengthen local service delivery and participation (World Bank 2012d).
Early in the evaluation period, the World Bank emphasized analytical work to inform government policies. Overall, the World Bank allocated $46 million for 44 human capital–related ASA in Indonesia (figure 4.1), with more than three-quarters of the funding coming from trust funds. As reported in ASA activity completion summaries and corroborated by several client interviews, 43 percent of ASA informed Indonesia’s national development strategies. For example, the government incorporated key themes from the World Bank’s education ASA into its early childhood education and development road map in the RPJMN. Similarly, it included ASA recommendations to strengthen pension and old-age savings programs in the National Social Security System (Sistem Jaminan Sosial Nasional) Employment Roadmap (2014–19). Most notably, the World Bank worked closely with the secretariat of the vice president in Indonesia to develop Stranas Stunting, the National Strategy to Accelerate Stunting Prevention, in 2018.
This analytical work by the World Bank shaped lending operations later in the evaluation period. Analytical work and lessons from the World Bank’s nutrition program in Peru directly informed the government’s approach in its development strategy. This, in turn, shaped the World Bank’s associated PforR lending operation, which invested in nutrition and early childhood development, as reported by government officials and World Bank staff. The evaluation’s portfolio review states that 52 percent of ASA informed lending. For example, the World Bank’s analytical work on universal health coverage in Indonesia, health financing systems assessment, public health expenditure review, functional and regulatory reviews, supply-side readiness assessments, and numerous feasibility studies motivated the JKN reform project. Figure 4.1 also supports the view that early ASA prepared the path to lending in later years.
Figure 4.1. Human Capital–Related Advisory Services and Analytics and Lending Projects, FY13–23
Figure 4.1. Human Capital–Related Advisory Services and Analytics and Lending Projects, FY13–23
Source: Independent Evaluation Group.
The World Bank strategically prioritized ASA to stay relevant amid legal limits on external financing and growing government demand for knowledge services. Indonesia’s 2002 constitutional amendment and 2009 health law inadvertently limited the additionality of multilateral financing to line ministry budgets. These laws mandated minimum public spending of 5 percent of the national budget for health and 20 percent for education. However, these thresholds discouraged line ministries from seeking external financing, which would count against their domestic budget allocations due to a substitution effect. Additionally, the government indicated a clear preference for more of the World Bank’s knowledge and convening services, as reflected in the FY13–15 CPS.
World Bank strategies prioritized education, but overall education engagement declined over the evaluation period. The FY13–15 CPS emphasized continued knowledge services in education. The FY16–20 CPF focused on helping all children complete 12 years of quality education, especially in disadvantaged regions, and proposed an IPF project to achieve this goal. The current CPF (FY21–25) identifies education as a priority as well, with ASA backing the national education strategy 2020–24 and potential lending. Despite this emphasis on knowledge, the World Bank’s education engagement declined in both the number of ASA and total ASA financial commitments after 2016 (figure 4.2). Moreover, this analytical work did not lead to lending in education like it did in health, nutrition, and social protection. For example, the World Bank’s 2020 education global flagship report recommended expanding access to early childhood education and development and higher education and improving basic and secondary education learning outcomes (Afkar et al. 2020), but there were no subsequent operations because of the government’s preference to limit multilateral development financing (box 4.1).
Figure 4.2. Human Capital–Related Advisory Services and Analytics by Sector, FY13–23
Figure 4.2. Human Capital–Related Advisory Services and Analytics by Sector, FY13–23
Source: Independent Evaluation Group.
Box 4.1. The World Bank’s Engagement in Education
The World Bank’s engagement in education declined over the evaluation period due to several reasons, including preferences of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology to limit multilateral development financing and to promote certain engagement modalities. For example, the ministry favored the use of embedded consultants—similar to the Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade approach—whereas the World Bank pursued more traditional advisory models. Subsequently, five proposed education projects of different instrument types totaling US$860 million were dropped.a
However, the World Bank continued its engagement with the Ministry of Religious Affairs through two active education lending operations, which support madrassas (Islamic schools). These schools served approximately 15 percent of Indonesia’s student population, primarily students from poor and vulnerable households with a relatively higher proportion of female students compared with general schools. Nonetheless, the most recent project with this ministry was also dropped, reportedly because of concerns over the World Bank’s procurement requirements under investment project financing operations.
The overall downsizing of the education portfolio affected the presence of the in-country education team and its capacity for dialogue and relationship building.
Sources: Independent Evaluation Group; World Bank 2019c.
Note: a. The Revitalizing Education System in Pre-Service Teacher Organizations Project: US$75 million; the Third Life Skills Education for Employment and Entrepreneurship Project: US$35 million; the School Operational Assistance—Knowledge Improvement for Transparency and Accountability Project: US$250 million; the Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Education Expenditure program: US$300 million; and the Improving Higher Education Quality, Equity, and Resilience program: US$200 million.
In other human capital–related sectors, the World Bank’s engagement followed a clear sequence from diagnostics to ASA to lending. First, diagnostics helped identify the country’s most pressing human development issues. Second, ASA deepened the understanding of these issues. Third, operations used these ASA to inform their designs. In health, for example, the 2015 Systematic Country Diagnostic found a need to improve health facilities’ readiness for service delivery (World Bank 2015b). In response, the World Bank carried out the Quantitative Service Delivery Study (ASA conducted in 2016) to assess the service readiness of primary health centers and identify differences between public and private providers, among geographical units, and other factors (Rajan et al. 2018). These efforts eventually informed the Indonesia—Supporting Primary Health Care Reform (I-SPHERE) lending operation, which aimed to strengthen Indonesia’s primary health care service delivery. A similar pattern of diagnostics and ASA followed by lending is evident in social protection initiatives.
A similarly strategic sequence of engagement was evident in the area of nutrition, where the World Bank played a pivotal role in shaping policy and investment decisions. Building on early diagnostics that highlighted Indonesia’s high rates of child stunting and malnutrition, the World Bank supported a series of influential ASA—including the Public Expenditure Review for nutrition and the health sector review—that provided in-depth analysis of spending efficiency, institutional arrangements, and cross-sectoral coordination. These efforts informed Indonesia’s National Strategy to Accelerate Stunting Prevention and underpinned subnational investment planning. Beyond national engagement, the World Bank also supported the government in leading the development of the ASEAN nutrition strategy, positioning Indonesia as a regional front-runner in addressing malnutrition.
Figure 4.3. World Bank Human Capital–Related Commitments by Sector, FY13–23
Figure 4.3. World Bank Human Capital–Related Commitments by Sector, FY13–23
Source: Independent Evaluation Group.
The World Bank’s sustained engagement, bolstered by ASA, built strong relationships with the government and eventually led to a large human capital–related portfolio (figures 4.3 and 4.4). The World Bank’s persistent engagement throughout the evaluation period—despite limited lending in the initial years—helped build trust with the government’s technical staff, many of whom later rose to positions of authority. The World Bank later leveraged those relationships to support its lending efforts. For example, it used its long-standing analytical work in nutrition to build a strong case for a multisectoral approach to investments. In interviews, government officials expressed appreciation for this sustained engagement.
Human capital–related projects relevantly targeted lagging regions and vulnerable populations. The evaluation found that many human capital projects were geolocated in provinces with high poverty rates (figure 4.5). The World Bank project to strengthen primary health care, I-SPHERE, prioritized three provinces—Maluku, Papua, and Nusa Tenggara Timur—that had the lowest outpatient and inpatient use rates in the country in 2015 (World Bank 2017a).1 Similarly, the population and civil registration component of the ID for Inclusive Service Delivery and Digital Transformation in Indonesia project targeted high-poverty provinces, including Maluku, Papua, Papua Barat, and Nusa Tenggara Timur. Several World Bank diagnostics and analytics identified these regions as lagging, which motivated the World Bank’s geographical focus (Rajan et al. 2018; World Bank 2015b). The human capital portfolio also had a strong gender focus, with Investing in Nutrition and Early Years focusing on mothers and empowering women using community-driven development approaches.
Figure 4.4. Approved Human Capital–Related Projects, FY13–23
Figure 4.4. Approved Human Capital–Related Projects, FY13–23
Source: Independent Evaluation Group.
Note: In the bottom part of the figure, each symbol represents on advisory services and analytics project.AF = additional financing; DPL = development policy loan; INEY = Investing in Nutrition and Early Years; IPF = investment project financing; JKN = National Health Insurance Program; PforR = Program-for-Results; RETF = recipient-executed trust fund; UHC = universal health coverage.
The World Bank supported the strengthening of the country’s social protection and health systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. In social protection, the World Bank supported the PKH program’s vertical expansion, which increased benefits from Rp 150,000 to Rp 200,000 per month, providing short-term relief from the impact of COVID-19 on poor people and vulnerable groups. In addition, the World Bank’s COVID-19 project equipped the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 referral facilities, improving intensive care capacity, the laboratory network and surveillance system, protocols to ensure quality care, and access to personal protective equipment, all with the broader goal of enhancing national public health preparedness (World Bank 2020f, 2020g). The World Bank and the Australian government also established Indonesia’s COVID-19 Observatory, which provided near-real-time insights on the pandemic’s impact, enabling policy makers to identify response gaps and redirect efforts to underserved areas (World Bank 2020a). Moreover, the World Bank helped the Ministry of Social Affairs enhance its delivery system for shock-response. This support facilitated the horizontal expansion of Indonesia’s social registry, Data Terpadu Kesejahteraan Sosial, to new beneficiaries (World Bank 2020e).
Gaps and missed opportunities emerged in the education sector during the pandemic. Schools remained closed for approximately 19 months during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a learning loss equivalent to 0.9–1.2 years of learning-adjusted schooling per primary student and a decline of 25–35 points in Programme for International Student Assessment reading scores (Afkar and Yarrow 2021; Yarrow et al. 2020). As part of the Australia–World Bank Indonesia Partnership, the World Bank developed analytical work proposing measures for learning recovery (Bodrogini 2022b), continued EdTech services (Bodrogini 2022a), and improvements in psychological well-being (Bodrogini 2022c). The World Bank also updated its learning loss estimates in 2024 and identified the drivers of learning loss (Hata et al. 2024). Yet, these efforts did not lead to greater engagement with the Ministry of Education. Instead, other development partners—such as the Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Innovation for Indonesia’s School Children (INOVASI) program—took the lead on supporting the ministry’s ambitious reforms, including the Merdeka Belajar agenda, which expanded school autonomy, revised the curriculum, and promoted competency-based assessments and teacher development (INOVASI 2020; World Bank 2023c).
Figure 4.5. Concentration of Human Capital–Related Projects Across Indonesia by Province, FY13–23
Figure 4.5. Concentration of Human Capital–Related Projects Across Indonesia by Province, FY13–23
Sources: Global Subnational Poverty Atlas; IPUMS International for Indonesia’s 2011 administrative boundary; World Bank Group data (2024) for extreme poverty distribution proxy.
Note: We used the share of the population living in households with consumption or income per person below the US$2.15 poverty line at 2017 international prices, as a proxy for extreme poverty. Provinces were grouped into relatively high-, medium-, and low-need categories by quantile with a mean at 18 percent. This map has been cleared by the World Bank Group cartography unit.
The World Bank’s FY22 Indonesia Human Capital DPL linked human capital outcomes with PFM reforms. Prior actions included clearer institutional mandates for stunting and tuberculosis programs and policies establishing sin taxes and unemployment insurance,2 including provisions for disaster-related shocks. These actions were meant to safeguard human capital spending and make it more effective. The DPL built on the World Bank’s comprehensive engagement across human development sectors and unlocks policy bottlenecks. For example, the DPL reforms introduced an unemployment insurance program (Jaminan Kehilangan Pekerjaan) to improve unemployment protection and tobacco control measures to tackle Indonesia’s high smoking rates and the associated rise in noncommunicable diseases.
The World Bank relied increasingly on PforR projects, which are valued for their flexibility and other design advantages. PforR projects were a preferred choice for both the government and the World Bank for both regular and emergency programs (figure 4.6). First, these projects circumvented the minimum sectoral spending requirements by channeling funds through the Ministry of Finance rather than line ministries. Tying intergovernmental transfers to achievement incentivized line ministries to meet outcomes and promoted vertical alignment, from national to local levels, and horizontal coordination across line ministries. Fifty-two of the human development–related PforR projects’ 143 disbursement-linked indicators (DLIs) promoted vertical coordination, 26 promoted horizontal coordination, and 47 promoted improved local capacity, mostly at the district and village levels. Second, they appeared to have supported outcome orientation, with 55 out of the 143 DLIs measuring outcomes. Most of these DLIs focused on intermediate outcomes that are essential for program implementation (for example, the number of community health centers in priority districts meeting minimum service-readiness standards for maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition). Some, however, also focused on higher-level results, such as the number of districts demonstrating strong performance in reducing stunting. Third, DLIs were designed to address regional inequality, with 43 of them having a regional focus, primarily on Eastern Indonesia and other lagging regions.
IPF projects complemented PforR projects that required closer oversight and capacity-building support. For example, the 2018 Investing in Nutrition and Early Years PforR included a complementary IPF to build the capacity of implementing ministries to deliver training and set up monitoring systems. Similarly, the IPF attached to the national health insurance PforR enhanced the JKN PforR secretariat’s technical expertise and implementation. The World Bank also deployed stand-alone IPF projects where a more targeted focus on capacity development was needed. For example, all engagements with the Ministry of Religious Affairs were implemented through IPF projects, given the ministry’s need for institutional strengthening. The World Bank chose IPF to finance the 2023 national ID systems project because the complex and high-risk nature of information technology procurement required close World Bank oversight.
Figure 4.6. Total Commitment by Instrument Type, FY13–23
Figure 4.6. Total Commitment by Instrument Type, FY13–23
Source: Independent Evaluation Group.
Note: DPF = development policy financing; IPF = investment project financing; PforR = Program-for-Results.
Effectiveness of World Bank Engagement in Support of Human Capital
The World Bank’s support to the nutrition agenda in Indonesia contributed to reduced stunting. At the beginning of the evaluation period, the country struggled with alarmingly high rates of stunting: the National Health Survey (Riset Kesehatan Dasar) indicated that 37 percent of Indonesian children younger than five years of age were stunted in 2013, much higher than in other countries in the region (Rokx et al. 2018; World Bank Group 2025). Stunting affected all regions and all income groups, but Eastern Indonesia had higher rates, and 49 percent of stunted children belonged to the poorest 40 percent of households (Skoufias et al. 2017). To support Indonesia on this issue, the World Bank proposed a convergence model that involved a multisectoral, cross-government, community-based response (box 4.2). This approach built on global and national initiatives, including the Scaling Up Nutrition platform launched in 2010, which brought together more than 100 partners and nearly 3,000 community service organizations. The World Bank also leveraged its analytical work to inform government institutions involved in both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions. Subsequently, prevalence of stunting declined to less than 22 percent in 2022, with a notable drop after 2018 (figure 4.7). An impact evaluation conducted by the World Bank’s Development Economics Vice Presidency found that Indonesia’s Stranas program, supported by the World Bank, reduced stunting by between 3 and 4 percentage points after two years and by between 8 and 10 percentage points after three years. The program’s impact was particularly pronounced in the Java–Bali region, where stunting declined by 12 percentage points after just two years of the program.
Figure 4.7. Prevalence of Stunting in Children, 2007–24
Figure 4.7. Prevalence of Stunting in Children, 2007–24
Sources: Stunting rates, National Health Survey; UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank.
Note: Children are younger than five years of age; height-for-age z-score is <−2. UNICEF = United Nations Children’s Fund; WHO = World Health Organization.
Box 4.2. The Convergence Model of Investing in Nutrition and Early Years
Building on the initiative of the World Bank, the Indonesian government adopted the convergence model (figure B4.2.1) of investing in nutrition. In 2017, the World Bank facilitated a South-South exchange where Indonesian officials visited Peru to learn about that country’s successful World Bank–supported stunting program (Marini et al. 2017). Participants applied several relevant lessons from that tour to the 2018 Stranas Stunting program, the country’s flagship Investing in Nutrition and Early Years initiative. The World Bank’s Investing in Nutrition and Early Years engagement included several approaches that contributed to success. First, it prioritized strong leadership, gaining high-level political support from the vice president’s office and the government’s anti-poverty team. The Human Capital Development Policy Loan defined institutional mandates, and the Program-for-Results disbursement-linked indicators strengthened intersectoral accountability. Second, the World Bank applied horizontal and vertical convergence by engaging all sectors—including health; water, sanitation, and hygiene; education; agriculture; and social protection—and all levels of government (World Bank 2024c). Third, it engaged local communities with tools such as the Village Convergence Scorecard and Length Mats for stunting to raise awareness and drive behavior change. Fourth, it promoted collaboration between the Social Development and the Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practices to ensure technical rigor and a community-grounded design. The Stranas program encapsulated this convergence approach by integrating 21 nutrition-specific and 12 nutrition-sensitive interventions into a coordinated service package.
Sources: Independent Evaluation Group; Marini et al. 2017; World Bank 2024c.
The World Bank’s support for primary health care reform and JKN helped improve health care quality and accessibility. The World Bank’s I-SPHERE project, approved in 2018, addressed regional disparities by reinforcing national standards and introducing a quality assurance and accreditation system to strengthen the performance of local governments and facilities. As a result, more than 90 percent of community health centers (puskesmas) in Eastern Indonesia were fully accredited in 2024, up from 30 percent in 2018 (World Bank n.d.). Complementing these efforts, the World Bank’s JKN Reforms and Results Program, approved in 2021, supported Indonesia’s national public health insurance agency, the BPJS Kesehatan, to expand the national health insurance scheme to 98 percent of the population (Jakarta Globe 2024). The increased coverage led to higher outpatient use (figure 4.8), and the percentage of women delivering in health facilities rose from 46 percent in 2007 to 74 percent in 2017 (BKKBN et al. 2018).
Strategic partnerships and trust funds contributed to the success of the World Bank’s health portfolio in Indonesia. A range of partners contributed across programs, from bilateral development partners cofinancing initiatives to development partners offering technical assistance. The Australia–World Bank Indonesia Partnership has been particularly impactful, with human development as a core focus. Australia’s recent independent Mid-Term Review of the Australia–World Bank Indonesia Partnership reaffirmed its relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability across lending, analytics, and technical assistance (Olliver et al. 2023). The World Bank’s partnership with the Global Fund included a buy-down mechanism that reduced Indonesia’s debt obligations, enabling lending for tuberculosis. Trust funds further supported knowledge sharing and technical inputs. For example, the Global Financing Facility funded technical assistance under the nutrition PforR’s IPF component.
Figure 4.8. Use of the National Health Insurance Program (JKN), 2014–24
Figure 4.8. Use of the National Health Insurance Program (JKN), 2014–24
Source: Independent Evaluation Group, based on BPJS Kesehatan annual reports (2014−24).
Note: For primary care visits, the evaluation estimated the values for 2023 and 2024. The estimate was calculated based on the relative increase of primary care visits (for both preventative and curative measures) of +17.3 percent (2023) and +10.6 percent (2024).
The World Bank’s Indonesia Social Assistance Reform Program enhanced the effectiveness of Indonesia’s conditional cash transfer program (PKH). The World Bank’s program contributed to a 1.6-fold expansion in beneficiary families, increasing coverage from 6 million to 10 million. It also enabled a shift toward cashless payments, thereby improving PKH’s efficiency, transparency, and accountability. The reform program was underpinned by robust technical assistance, including the Social Assistance Reform Technical Assistance (2009–16) and the Indonesia Social Assistance Strengthening Technical Assistance from 2019 onward. Studies highlight PKH’s successes in reducing stunting and increasing health services use and education participation (Cahyadi et al. 2020). A 2020 study showed that PKH graduate families had higher education levels, more types of assets, better housing, and more nonagriculture work compared with pregraduate beneficiaries (Syamsulhakim and Khadijah 2021).
The World Bank enabled the government to expand its social assistance during the pandemic. The World Bank’s additional financing of the Social Assistance Reform Program allowed the government to increase the PKH benefit amounts to cover 21 percent of the median monthly household consumption of the poorest 10 percent of the population (Holmemo et al. 2020) and the disbursement frequency from quarterly to monthly. The expansion of social protection programs cushioned the pandemic’s impacts, especially for poor people and vulnerable (Indrawati et al. 2022). The evaluation did not uncover evidence of PKH’s impact on poverty, but poverty rates had returned to a single-digit level by September 2021, equivalent to moving nearly 1.04 million people out of poverty (BPS-Statistics Indonesia 2022b). This finding suggests that Indonesia’s social assistance programs helped mitigate the pandemic’s poverty impacts.
While the World Bank played a significant role in advancing Indonesia’s social protection agenda, progress stalled in the postpandemic period. A leadership change at the Ministry of Social Affairs led to a sharp shift in the World Bank’s engagement, ultimately derailing the planned PforR operation. No disbursements were made after 2021 because of limited interest of the new minister. This disruption not only weakened collaboration with the World Bank and other development partners but also strained interministerial coordination. The decision by the Ministry of Social Affairs to restrict access to the social registry and delay registry updates further impeded progress on system strengthening (interviews with client counterparts; Hadiwidjaja et al. 2022).
- Based on SUSENAS (Indonesian National Socioeconomic Survey) 2015. The recall period for using outpatient services was the last 30 days; the recall period for using inpatient services was 12 months (BPS-Statistics Indonesia 2016).
- Based on the mutual obligation principle and provision of cash benefits, training, and jobs-search assistance.