MADRID (AFP) — One billion people in Asia are seriously affected by surging global food prices, the director general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, said Wednesday.
"This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline," he told a news conference in Madrid.
Soaring food prices will be the focus of discussions when the Asian Development Bank (ADB) gathers for a four-day annual meeting that gets underway Saturday in the Spanish capital, Nag said.
"We will talk about ways to help the poor including targeting cash income support and ADB will respond to requests from the governments to help them with emergency assistance for budgetary support for that," he said.
"We will also discuss in the longer term what to do about increased investments in agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation systems, farm to market roads greater support for rural finances," he added.
The ADB predicts inflation in Asia will hit 5.1 percent in 2008, its highest level in ten years due mostly to the rise in food and fuel costs.
"We believe this is the greatest policy challenge which we face," Nag said.
The food price rises are blamed on higher energy and fertiliser costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations and price speculation.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday ordered a top level task force to take on the global crisis caused by rising food prices and urged key producer nations to end export bans.
Nag said the the problem was more the inability of the poor to buy food rather than a lack of supply.
"Supply is tight no question about it. Stocks are the lowest in decades but I think we should be very focused that we need to look at the price issue which is keeping a lot of people in a very vulnerable range," he said.
Based in Manila, the ADB is owned by its 67 member countries -- 48 from the Asia-Pacific region, and 19 from elsewhere around the world.
Last year it approved 10.1 billion dollars (6.5 billion euros) in loans, 673 million dollars in grant projects and technical assistance amounting to 243 million.
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