Top finance and development officials from around the globe last night called for urgent action to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest will spread unless the cost of basic staples is contained.
"We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry
We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. World Bank President Robert Zoellick
that," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the end of a meeting of the IMF and World Bank's Development Committee.
Mr Zoellick and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have said the issue of skyrocketing food prices needs to be front and center at the highest political levels.
While Brown said he would raise it at an upcoming meeting of the Group of Eight powerful nations, Mr Zoellick said that would be too late. "Frankly speaking, that G8 meeting is in June and we cannot wait," he told a news conference.
Concerns about food costs took on new urgency as senators in Haiti ousted the prime minister after a week of food-related rioting in which at least five people died. There have also been protests in Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso in Africa, and in
Indonesia and the Philippines.
In just two months, rice prices have shot up around 75 per cent, closing in on historic highs. Meanwhile, the cost of wheat has climbed by 120 per cent over the past year, more than doubling the price of bread in most poor countries.
The problem is most worrying in developing countries where food represents a larger share of what consumers buy. It threatens to sharply increase malnutrition and hunger, while reversing progress in reducing poverty and debt burdens among the poorest nations.
Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said rising food costs threatened to stir more social unrest.
"It is becoming starker by the day that unless we act fast for a global consensus on the price spiral, the social unrest induced by food prices in several countries will conflagrate into a global contagion, leaving no country - developed or otherwise - unscathed," he said.
"The global community must collectively deliberate on immediate steps to reverse the unconscionable increases in the price of food, which threatens to negate the benefits to the poor nations from aid, trade and debt relief," he said.
Douglas Alexander, Britain's minister for international development, said his country is willing to work with others to bring prices down. "Now is the time for urgent action to tackle the crisis, which is affecting millions of the poorest people across the globe," he said.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that governments should resist the temptation to fight soaring food costs with price controls, which he said would likely backfire.
The World Bank has warned that food prices will remain elevated this year and next, and likely stay above 2004 levels through 2015.