India is considering a blanket ban on trading in food futures, highlighting growing concerns in Asia over the role of hedge funds and financial market traders in the recent surge in commodities prices. An emergency move by India to shut down its food futures market, proposed on Monday by P Chidambaram, the finance minister, would reverse measures introduced only five years ago to aid the development of India as a financial centre. Speaking on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Madrid, Mr Chidambaram also lambasted the conversion of crops into biofuel as "the single biggest reason why we are facing this [food] crisis'. His comments came a day after US president George W. Bush said India was partly responsible for rising food prices. "To put it mildly, [converting food crops to biofuels] is foolish; to put it strongly, it is a crime against humanity,' Mr Chidambaram said. The US is a leading promoter of corn-based ethanol, but Mr Chidambaram also singled out biofuel from palm oil, an Asia-centred industry led by Malaysia and Indonesia. India has already curbed futures trading in some crops, as well as being among countries that have imposed restrictions on food exports. India's approach, however, drew a strong rebuke from two senior, Indian-born officials of the Asian Development Bank, highlighting concerns among international institutions that costlier food is leading to trade protectionism and new market distortions. Rajat Nag, the ADB's managing director-general, told the Financial Times that trading restrictions "send the wrong signal and are just not productive'. Ifzal Ali, the ADB's chief economist, described banning futures trading as "a political gimmick' intended to pander to voters. Weighing into the debate, Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said that speculation was not responsible for food-price rises. "At the source ... was a supply phenomenon and a demand phenomenon, which was explaining most of what we have,' he said after chairing a central bankers' meeting in Basel, Switzerland. Food shortages have sparked social unrest in Africa and parts of Asia, as well as other impoverished nations such as the Caribbean island of Haiti. One person was killed on Monday as thousands of Somalis protested in the capital of Mogadishu because food traders had refused to take old-issue currency notes blamed for fuelling inflation. In South Africa, the government said the country was considering introducing food vouchers and extending tax relief on basic foodstuffs. Criticism of food and oil speculators echo some of the concerns voiced by governments in 1997, when much of Asia plunged into financial crisis. To help avoid a repeat of that crisis, Asian finance ministers at the weekend agreed to turn about $80bn of existing bilateral currency swaps into a common facility that could be used for emergency funding. Some governments are also laying the blame for surging oil prices on financial trading. Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's new finance minister, said: "It is the big speculators that have taken the oil price to a level that is unacceptable and they just want to ruin the developing countries.' Haruhiko Kuroda, the ADB's president, said that more than 1bn people were being affected in the region by a food-price surge that has "a stark human dimension'. He called for Asian countries to co-ordinate more closely, particularly to overcome distribution hurdles. However, such problems were highlighted on Monday when the Philippines government failed to attract offers for 675,000 tonnes of rice during an auction. Manila said that it preferred to hold back on importing until prices fell. Additional reporting by Ralph Atkins and Roel Landingin Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008