The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people face starvation if food prices continue to rise.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (right) and Italy's Minister of Economy and Finance Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (centre) speak with reporters yesterday
Dominique Strauss-Kahn said if food inflation keeps accelerating at its current rate "hundreds of thousands of people will be starving, leading to a disruption in the global economic environment''.
“Economic progress made over the last years could be destroyed,'' he told reporters at the IMF's semi-annual meeting in Washington yesterday.
Governments throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East are seeking to combat food inflation and avoid social unrest by curbing exports or lifting import duties on basic food staples such as rice.
Global food prices surged 57 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the United Nations, and the World Bank warns civil disturbances may be triggered in 33 countries.
Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was voted out of office by the country's senate today after violent protests over rising food prices, news agencies reported today.
President Rene Preval, who called the no-confidence vote “unjust”, announced a 15 percent cut in the price of rice, which had doubled this week to $70 for a 50-kilogram bag, Agence France-Presse reported. No replacement for Mr Alexis was announced.
Consumer-price inflation in poor or so-called developing countries will accelerate this year to 7.4 per cent, compared with a January forecast of 6.4 per cent, the IMF said this week.
Food prices will probably remain comparatively high until at least 2015, the World Bank said in a separate report. Rice, the staple food for half the world, has surged 96 percent in the past year, reaching a record $21.60 per 100 pounds on April 8th.
That's forced China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, which export more than a third of the world's rice, to curb shipments of the grain. Argentina and Russia have also sought to discourage food exports in a bid to boost domestic supplies