MANILA (AP) — A billion poor people in Asia require food aid and sound fiscal policies to help them cope with skyrocketing food prices, the Asian Development Bank said yesterday as four rice-exporting nations prepared to discuss a proposed cartel to control the staple.
Underscoring the fallout from price rises that have sparked food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Somalia, the ADB said its growth estimate for Asia this year would be cut if prices continued to rise, and that next year would be even worse, erasing the gains made in recent decades across the region.
“Their purchasing power has been eroded, placing them at greater risk of hunger and malnutrition,” ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said of Asia’s poor, as the bank opened its annual two-day meeting in Madrid.
The statement came after the rice market plunged into uncertainty when the Philippines, the world’s biggest importer, failed in an attempt to boost its stocks of the food that many Asians eat with every meal.
The tender to increase its buffer stock attracted only one bidder, indicating a tightness in global exports, which could push prices even higher, traders said.
On the other hand, the Philippines’ decision to delay another tender until prices dip could temper prices because of a lower immediate demand for the grain.
That is the uncertain situation that rice exporters Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Burma face as they meet today to discuss a proposal by Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, that they form a cartel. They are trying to assuage concerns that they might force up prices by limiting supplies.
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