Thomson Financial News
05.20.08
SINGAPORE (Thomson Financial) - The World Bank said on Tuesday prices of food such as rice will stay high in the next two to three years, pushing back efforts to fight poverty.
A variety of factors ranging from strong demand from emerging economies like China and India, to financial speculation, market distortions and weather have pushed food prices to unprecedented levels.
'We believe this phenomenon [of high food prices] is here to stay for a few years, not for a few weeks or a few months,' World Bank managing director Juan Jose Daboub said at a media briefing.
Daboub said 100 million people have been pushed back into poverty, subsisting on $2 a day, over the past two years.
'The doubling of food prices for a period of three years would be equivalent to going back seven years in terms of poverty alleviation,' said Daboub.
Boosting global food production is the only solution to the soaring food inflation but this is possible only in the longer-term, said Daboub.
'We need to work on a new deal for food policy in order to address the short-term needs while keeping in mind that it is going to take longer to alleviate the situation,' he said.
The World Bank is urging collaborative efforts among nations to help ease the plight of the very poor, while voicing out its disapproval of commodity cartels.
'I don't like cartels. I don't think it's good to have another cartel, like in some commodities,' said Daboub.
Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter with 9.5 million tons shipped overseas in 2007, had earlier floated the idea of forming a rice cartel with Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia which would fix the price of rice, and would operate in the same way that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sets the price of crude oil.
05.20.08
SINGAPORE (Thomson Financial) - The World Bank said on Tuesday prices of food such as rice will stay high in the next two to three years, pushing back efforts to fight poverty.
A variety of factors ranging from strong demand from emerging economies like China and India, to financial speculation, market distortions and weather have pushed food prices to unprecedented levels.
'We believe this phenomenon [of high food prices] is here to stay for a few years, not for a few weeks or a few months,' World Bank managing director Juan Jose Daboub said at a media briefing.
Daboub said 100 million people have been pushed back into poverty, subsisting on $2 a day, over the past two years.
'The doubling of food prices for a period of three years would be equivalent to going back seven years in terms of poverty alleviation,' said Daboub.
Boosting global food production is the only solution to the soaring food inflation but this is possible only in the longer-term, said Daboub.
'We need to work on a new deal for food policy in order to address the short-term needs while keeping in mind that it is going to take longer to alleviate the situation,' he said.
The World Bank is urging collaborative efforts among nations to help ease the plight of the very poor, while voicing out its disapproval of commodity cartels.
'I don't like cartels. I don't think it's good to have another cartel, like in some commodities,' said Daboub.
Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter with 9.5 million tons shipped overseas in 2007, had earlier floated the idea of forming a rice cartel with Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia which would fix the price of rice, and would operate in the same way that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) sets the price of crude oil.
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