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With
global food prices escalating by 43 percent this year, a
recent report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warns
that rising food-price inflation could increase the
ranks of 1.5 billion Asians subsisting on less than $2 a
day.
To
illustrate the effects of food inflation, the ADB
calculated that with every 10-percent increase in food
prices, 2.72 million Filipinos will become poor. In 2006
27.6 million Filipinos made ends meet with less than a
dollar a day. Given the 12-percent increase in food
prices this year, it is very likely that the number of
poor has already risen to more than 30 million or a
third of our population.
Estimates by agricultural experts show that global food
prices would remain high for the next four or five
years; while John Bruton, Ambassador of the European
Union to the
United States,
predicts this trend will continue for the next 10 to 15
years.
This
warrants heightened regional efforts at ensuring food
security. Home to the largest rice exporters and
importers,
Southeast Asia
should begin cooperating toward regional food
self-sufficiency.
There
are various vehicles to this end. The Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), for instance, can serve
as a base to build a framework for multilateral dialogue
and collaboration in managing food supplies and prices.
Through dialogue facilitated by the Asean, importing and
exporting countries can share information on
cross-country stocks and prospects to enable rational
and more moderate, long-term assessments of supplies and
prices.
The
Asean Emergency Rice Reserve, which was set up back in
1979, should be strengthened and updated to meet the
increasing demands of population growth and the changes
in the world trade regime. Currently, the Rice Reserve’s
initial stock, amounting to 50,000 metric tons, does not
even reach half a day’s combined consumption of Asean
countries.
Under
this setup, Southeast Asian countries facing shortages
could tap into the regional Rice Reserve, which sources
its stocks from what Asean member-countries have set
aside to prepare for sudden shortages in global supply.
But because it leaves negotiations at the bilateral
level—thus placing the country in need under the mercy
of the supplier-country—not one Asean member has used it
for the 25 years it existed. Indonesia, for instance,
opted to borrow from the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank instead of applying for rice stocks from the
Rice Reserve during its food crisis in 1997.
E-mail: edgardo_angara@hotmail.com. Web site:
www.edangara.com. |
