Finance Ministers Emphasize Food Crisis Over Credit Crisis

The head of the International Monetary Fund has said rising food prices may lead to a humanitarian crisis.

IMF chief voices food fears



Finance Ministers Emphasize Food Crisis Over Credit Crisis


The world’s economic ministers declared on Sunday that shortages and skyrocketing prices for food posed a potentially greater threat to economic and political stability than the turmoil in capital markets.

The ministers, conferring in the shadow of a slumping American economy that threatens to pull down the economies of other countries, turned their attention to the food crisis and called on the wealthiest countries to fulfill pledges to help prevent starvation and disorder in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“Throughout the weekend we have heard again and again from ministers in developing countries and emerging economies that this is a priority issue,” said Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank. “We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that.”

Mr. Zoellick said that almost half of the $500 million that the World Food Program recently requested in additional pledges for food aid this year had been committed, but that the program would not meet a deadline of raising the money by May 1.

The World Food Program seeks the aid, on top of nearly $3 billion already committed, because of shortfalls in food distribution resulting from higher prices.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said the food crisis posed questions about the survivability of democracy and political regimes.

“As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said. “We now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions.”

World Bank and I.M.F. officials noted that political instability had already hit countries as disparate as Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and Indonesia because of food shortages, forcing some countries to limit food exports.

Mr. Zoellick had earlier highlighted the food issue in speeches and presentations this weekend, saying the World Bank intended not only to help with the emergency situation but also to upgrade programs to help countries produce more food on their own. He cited Malawi, in southern Africa, as a country that has started going in that direction.

But food has also become a symbol of the conflicting pressures that frequently emerge at the semiannual gatherings of finance and development officials and central bankers that take place in Washington every spring.

Some ministers from poor countries, for example, are growing impatient with the way the West is addressing global warming by subsidizing and encouraging conversion of corn, sugar cane and other food products into substitutes for oil. The shift is helping to drive up prices, they say.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn said he had heard from many financial officials this weekend that the West’s focus on fuel, at the expense of food, was a “crime against humanity.” Though he noted that the I.M.F. is primarily a monetary and financial agency, he said it would try to “review its tools” to help countries pay for food imports.

In addition, many ministers meeting here appeared to be self-conscious about how much of the attention at the meeting has focused on the global credit crisis, which has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for banks and investment banks, while there was less focus on the problem of feeding the world’s poor.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said on Friday that the subject of food shortages had come up at the meeting of finance ministers of the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan under the heading of the Group of Seven.

“Every country sitting around the table was focused on it,” Mr. Paulson said of the Group of Seven’s concern about food, adding that Mr. Zoellick “made an impassioned plea.” But Treasury officials said they had no details of what aid the United States was prepared to commit.