A doubling of food prices over the past three years could push 100-million people in poorer developing countries further into poverty and governments must step in to tackle the issue, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said on Sunday.
”Based on a rough analysis, we estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100-million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty,” Zoellick said in a statement at the end of the World Bank spring meeting in Washington, DC.
”This is not just a question about short-term needs, as important as those are. This is about ensuring that future generations don’t pay a price too,” he said.
Calling on governments to begin tackling the issue, Zoellick said: ”We have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It’s as stark as that.”
On the eve of the meetings, Zoellick had said the crisis could mean ”seven lost years” in the fight against worldwide poverty.
The food crisis attracted increasing attention at this weekend’s spring meetings of the 185-nation World Bank and its twin institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sparking loud warnings of dire consequences.
”Food prices, if they go on like they are doing today … the consequences will be terrible,” IMF MD Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Saturday.
”As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war,” Straus-Kahn warned.
Prices of rice, wheat, corn, cooking oil, milk and other foodstuffs have all risen sharply in recent months, sparking violent protests in many countries, including Egypt, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines and Indonesia.
A World Bank report last week said global wheat prices jumped by 181% over the 36 months to February, with overall food prices up 83%.
In Pakistan and Thailand, troops have been deployed to prevent the seizure of food, especially rice, from fields and warehouses. — Sapa-AFP