IPS News
Three words -- high food prices -- emerged like a gatecrasher at an event hosted by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) here that was originally billed as a celebration of the bank’s new vision for poverty eradication in Asia.
Participants at the event discussed the AsDB’s ‘Strategy 2020’ -- the long- term strategic framework (LTSF) for the 2008-2020 period -- and raised the alarm about the current global food crisis. It is a reality that the bank cannot ignore, they said, in light of the millions who could be condemned to a life of hunger and poverty in the region.
"The rising food prices are a threat to food security and a threat to poverty reduction, and we stress that food security must be adopted as a challenge of the LTSF," D. Subba Rao, secretary of India’s finance ministry, said during a Sunday morning seminar for the central bank governors of the AsDB’s 67 member countries.
"The food crisis cannot be remedied through emergency measures. We have to put back money in rural development," added Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
They were comments echoed by a ranking finance official from Bangladesh, who said that "the food problem is not a cyclical problem but a structural problem."
Such concerns exposed a deep flaw in the bank’s new quest to direct development in Asia. The LTSF makes little reference to aiding the continent’s agriculture sector in the rural areas -- home to a majority of the 600 million Asians living in absolute poverty, on less the one dollar a day.
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