'Billions at risk' from soaring food costs
Pastor Dale Morgan
'Billions at risk' from soaring food costs*
From correspondents in Madrid
May 05, 2008 09:18pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has called today for an
"immediate response" to soaring food prices, which he said threatened a
billion Asians with the risk of malnutrition.
The head of the bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, also warned that the food problem
could cut into decades of economic gains in the Asia-Pacific region.
"These are troubling times for the world economy. On the heels of
turmoil in the financial markets and economic slowdown in the US and
elsewhere, soaring food prices are hitting the poor very hard,'' he said.
"This price surge has a stark human dimension and has greatly affected
over a billion people in Asia and the Pacific alone. Their purchasing
power has been eroded placing them at a greater risk of hunger and
malnutrition.''
He said the stocks of food grains were at the lowest levels for decades.
Reduced supplies and increased demand along with the sharp depreciation
of the US dollar and trade restrictions by some countries have combined
to cause the price surge in recent months, the ADB president said.
"The focus must now be on the soaring prices and our immediate
response,'' he said.
He called for "prudent macroeconomic management'' along with targeted
income support to protect food entitlements and livelihoods of the most
vulnerable.
"The absence of such measures could seriously undermine the global fight
against poverty and erode the gains of the past decades,'' he said.
"The ADB is prepared to respond with immediate financial assistance to
relieve fiscal pressure on affected countries."
Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food stable across much
of Asia, are at about $1069.86 a tonne, up threefold from the last ADB
annual meeting in Japan one year ago.
The jump in food prices is fuelling inflation globally and the ADB
predicted it would hit 5.1 per cent across Asia this year, its highest
level since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago and is raising
concerns of popular unrest.
Asian nations will see their fiscal deficits worsen because of the need
to provide subsidies to offset rising food and energy costs for the
poor, the ADB said in a report issued at the gathering.
The problem will be more severe in countries that already have a large
deficit like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, it said.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick has estimated that high food prices
seriously affect about two billion people across the world and threaten
to push 100 million poor people further into poverty.