Asian Development Bank To Aid Countries With Food Price Relief

Madrid, Spain (AHN) - The Asian Development Bank has decided to provide monetary help to some of the Asian and Pacific countries to meet the cost of rising food prices.

The bank warned at the same time that it could reverse the advancements made in reducing poverty across the continent due to the crisis of higher food prices.

"Rising food and fuel prices have placed many governments in the region under significant pressure to put food on the table of the poor and vulnerable," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said at a briefing in Madrid, according to Bloomberg.

"The ADB will provide immediate budgetary support to the hardest hit countries."

While, the donor countries have decided to provide more than $11 billion and ABD pledged additional $1 billion as a part of food aid to help countries tackle with the rising good crisis.

Food prices all over the world have increased by 57 percent in March compared to a year earlier, according to the report by the United Nations.

Some of the factors causing the crisis include rising demand of food produces, global warming, poor harvests and increasing conversion of agricultural lands to biofuel production.

While, the major rice producers like Thailand, Vietnam and India have put restrictions on exports to secure domestic supply.

"As long as governments can maintain food subsidies, I would see little risk of outright riots in Asia," Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg.

"What's driving food prices right now is strong demand, rather than a disruption in supply."