Jakarta (ANTARA) – Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs, Zulkifli Hasan, has set a target to complete the development of supporting facilities for 30,000 cooperatives under the Red and White Village Cooperatives program by May 2026.”The target is to finish construction between May and June. Once the facilities are ready, we can move forward with the operationalization of the cooperatives,” he stated following a limited coordination meeting at his office in Jakarta on Thursday.He noted that the cooperatives are intended to make fertilizers, groceries, subsidized LPG, and other basic commodities more accessible to rural communities through the facilities currently under construction.Hasan added that the government also envisions the cooperatives serving as offtakers of products from local micro, small, and medium enterprises to help stimulate rural economies.In a separate statement, Joao Angelo de Sousa Mota, president director of state-run food company PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, reported that 680 cooperative buildings have been completed to date, most of them located in Central Java, East Java, and West Java provinces.”As for regions outside Java, the number averages 10 to 14 units,” he added.Mota assured the public that construction remains underway for 29,424 village cooperatives across the country. He further revealed a more ambitious target of completing development for 30,000 cooperatives by April 2026.”My target is to complete construction for 60,000 to 80,000 cooperatives by July,” he said, underscoring rural residents’ eagerness to participate in the projects.In October 2025, the government brokered a pact between PT Agrinas and the military to accelerate infrastructure and facility development for more than 80 thousand village cooperatives inaugurated by President Prabowo Subianto in July.Under Prabowo's leadership, the government established the cooperatives with 13 objectives, including empowering rural residents, generating jobs, making essential key commodities and services more accessible, alleviating extreme poverty, curbing inflation, and boosting the farmers’ exchange rate.