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Soaring food prices may throw millions of people back into poverty in Asia and undo a decade of gains, regional leaders said Sunday while calling for increased agricultural production to meet rising demand.
Asia - home to two-thirds of the world's poor - risks rising social unrest as a doubling of the price of wheat and rice in the past year has hurt people spending more than half their income on food, Fukushiro Nukaga, the Japanese finance minister, said during the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.
If food prices rise 20 percent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, the Indian finance secretary, D. Subba Rao, warned. "In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth," Rao said at the bank's meeting in Madrid.
A 43 percent rise in global food prices in the year ended in March set off violent protests in Cameroon and Burkina Faso as well as rallies in Indonesia following reports of starvation deaths.
Many governments have introduced food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising costs, but they have only exacerbated price rises on global markets, Nukaga said. "Those hardest hit are the poorest segments of the population, especially the urban poor."
"It will have a negative impact on their living standards and their nutrition, a situation that may lead to social unrest and distrust," he added.
The bank, an international financial institution, tries to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people. It estimates the very poorest people in the Asia-Pacific region spend 60 percent of their income on food and a further 15 percent on fuel - the crucial basic commodities of life that have been subjected to relentless price increases in the past year.
Despite brisk economic growth, averaging about 6 percent annually across the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, more than 600 million people still live in absolute poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day.
According to the bank's statistics, almost half of the world's poor live in South Asia alone. In China, 452 million people earn less than $2 a day, a figure that reaches 868 million in India. Child malnutrition is high and almost half of the children in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal are undernourished. Some 1.9 billion people in the region do not have access to basic sanitation. (said Tribune)
Asia - home to two-thirds of the world's poor - risks rising social unrest as a doubling of the price of wheat and rice in the past year has hurt people spending more than half their income on food, Fukushiro Nukaga, the Japanese finance minister, said during the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.
If food prices rise 20 percent, 100 million poor people across Asia could be forced back into extreme poverty, the Indian finance secretary, D. Subba Rao, warned. "In many countries that will mean the undoing of gains in poverty reduction achieved in the past decade of growth," Rao said at the bank's meeting in Madrid.
A 43 percent rise in global food prices in the year ended in March set off violent protests in Cameroon and Burkina Faso as well as rallies in Indonesia following reports of starvation deaths.
Many governments have introduced food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising costs, but they have only exacerbated price rises on global markets, Nukaga said. "Those hardest hit are the poorest segments of the population, especially the urban poor."
"It will have a negative impact on their living standards and their nutrition, a situation that may lead to social unrest and distrust," he added.
The bank, an international financial institution, tries to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their people. It estimates the very poorest people in the Asia-Pacific region spend 60 percent of their income on food and a further 15 percent on fuel - the crucial basic commodities of life that have been subjected to relentless price increases in the past year.
Despite brisk economic growth, averaging about 6 percent annually across the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, more than 600 million people still live in absolute poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day.
According to the bank's statistics, almost half of the world's poor live in South Asia alone. In China, 452 million people earn less than $2 a day, a figure that reaches 868 million in India. Child malnutrition is high and almost half of the children in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Nepal are undernourished. Some 1.9 billion people in the region do not have access to basic sanitation. (said Tribune)
