This edition of the Macro Poverty Outlooks periodical contains country-by-country forecasts and overviews for GDP, fiscal, debt and poverty indicators for the developing countries of the Middle East and
Soaring food prices have hampered Asia's fight against poverty and some countries may need foreign aid to feed their hungry millions, the Asian Development Bank president said on Friday.
The Finance Minister Mr P. Chidambaram's utterance in Washington last week that he is prepared to sacrifice revenue to tame inflation by fiscal measures and the repetition of the same point during his intervention in the discussion on price rise in the Lok Sabha on April 16, 2008 have unwittingly been used to wrest more import duty cuts. The latest to join the bandwagon is the Petroleum Ministry, which is seeking a scrapping of 5 per cent customs duty on imported crude oil.
Global food shortages have taken everyone by surprise. What is to be done? Reuters SAMAKE BAKARY sells rice from wooden basins at Abobote market in the northern suburbs of Abidjan in C
Food prices are causing misery and strife around the world. Radical solutions are needed PICTURES of hunger usually show passive eyes and swollen bellies. The harvest fails because of war or strife; the onset of crisis is sudden and localised. Its burden falls on those already at the margin.
Inflation has become a major headache for the Government. And rightly so. For in the absence of anything positive to take to the voters in the State and not-so-distant parliamentary elections, the ruling combine at least needs to ensure that the 'aam aadmi' stays neutral on its record in office. A failure to check inflation is bound to incur the wrath of the ubiquitous aam aadmi which is bound to be reflected through the ballot-box. Hence the hyper activity in the government to try and somehow contain the inflationary demons.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who belives that the food crisis had reached emergency proportions, is considering to convene a world summit to discuss how to respond to the crisis, his spokesperson said Thursday. "Yes, that is exactly what he is considering," spokesperson Michele Montas said when asked whether the UN chief plans to hold a gathering of world leaders to find ways to respond to the grave problems of food availability and high prices that have led to protests and tensions in many countries.
Postponement of meeting of cabinet committee on prices on account of ministerial row is a pointer towards the laid-back approach of the government towards a critical problem which is potentially calamitous. As the food prices explode across the country setting off a chain of violent mass protests, the ruling clique seems to have started feeling the heat in the election year for the reason too obvious. Surging prices have threatened its political stability and have also the potential to faint its prospects to return to power.
The Chandigarh unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI) held a mass procession to protest against the rising prices of essential commodities. CPI members and union workers participated in the procession that started from the Nehru Park in Sector 22. The procession culminated at the office of the deputy commissioner in Sector 17 with a rally. "The steep hike in the prices of essential commodities like flour, pulses, rice, milk and kerosene has put them beyond the reach of the common man,' Bant Singh Brar, member of the national council of CPI said.
Social stability will be shattered if the price-hike of food continues, said the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The impact of the soaring prices of food on the poorer section of the people is very significant and may turn out to be devastating, said the president of the MCCI, Latifur Rahman, at a meeting with the Bangladesh Bank's governor, Salehuddin Ahmed, on Wednesday. Market imperfections, domestic supply shortfalls and imported inflation are the three main reasons behind the rising inflation, he pointed out.
The government is going to float a budgetary fund from the next fiscal year for mitigating the effects of natural calamities, the finance and planning adviser, AB Mirza Azizul Islam, informed a pre-budget consultation meeting on Wednesday. The disclosure of such a contingency fund was made following a call from the Bangladesh Economic Association for launching the fund, amounting to Tk 1,000 crore, with local resources. The Ministry of Finance is already working on how to float the fund, and its size in the initial year [2008-09] may be small, said the secretary to the ministry.
