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Dubai: The food price and supply situation is turning worse, and in some places is uglier than expected and could lead to domestic turmoil, including the "risk of war", a top official said.
The food price situation has already claimed its first victim - the Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis - who was forced to quit, and food ration lines in Bangladesh are becoming longer everyday with sporadic incidents, reflecting a near explosive situation due to hunger.
"Food prices, if they go on like they are doing today... the consequences will be terrible," International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominque Strauss-Kahn at a press conference ahead of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington.
Possible impact
Gulf News has been highlighting the global food price crisis and its possible impact on the Gulf countries. "Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving... [eading] to disruption of the economic environment," Strauss-Kahn told a news conference.
Development gains made in the past five or 10 years could be "totally destroyed," he said, warning that social unrest could even lead to war.
"As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war," he said. If the world wanted to avoid "these terrible consequences," then rising prices had to be tackled.
Skyrocketing prices on rice, wheat, corn and other staple foods like milk particularly hurt developing nations, where the bulk of income is spent on the bare necessities for survival.
Rising food prices have also encouraged the UAE government to intervene, when the Ministry of Economy allowed the retail chains to directly import food items by cutting the middlemen to keep prices of essentials at a decent level.
As a result, Union Cooperative Society and Emke Group have already signed a deal with the UAE Ministry of Economy to supply essential food items at 2007 base prices to help the consumers.
Have your say
Have you heard of any incidents of unrest in your home country as a result of inflation? What pre-emptive measures do you think could be taken by countries to avoid such a situation? Tell us at letter2editor@gulfnews.com
Your comments
I have a strong feeling that the next world war will be started because of food. Day by day, the situation is getting out of control. People may not agree on my assumption, however, time is also a witness for the change. The IMF need to work on short and long term planning to defeat this problem. On the other hand, every country also must need to act very fast and make an action plan for the long terms and a contingency plan for the short term in order to provide relief to the nations.
Tariq
Dammam,Saudi Arabia
Posted: April 14, 2008, 09:52
The whole world shall fully concentrate on the environment issue, since this greatly affects our agricultural output in every way. Oil producing countries must try to balance the price of crude.
Jun
Abu Dhabi,UAE
Posted: April 14, 2008, 08:15
Ensure there is no starvation at all levels of life. Please don't create panic among the people since hoarding is likely to aggravate the crisis.
Shamsheer
Dubai,UAE
Posted: April 14, 2008, 08:13
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