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Food Price Crisis
Updated: 27 August 2008
Protecting Poor and Vulnerable in Face of Rising Prices
The estimated 1.2 billion poor people in Asia and Pacific who spend on average 60% of their income on food have been hit hard by soaring food grain prices in recent months. Rice and wheat prices have spiked at levels not seen in over three decades. This threatens to exacerbate poverty in developing Asia by reducing the real incomes of the already poor, while pushing many others below the poverty line.
In response, ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda at the 41st Annual Meeting in Madrid in early May 2008 announced $500 million in immediate budgetary support to tackle rising food costs in the region and pledged to double lending to $2 billion for agriculture in 2009.
In the long term, ADB's assistance to the agricultural and natural resource sector would seek to enhance productivity, improve market access and deepen reforms.
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Features
Has Inflation Hurt the Poor?
 An ADB Working Paper from the Economics and Research Department measures the impact of price changes on poverty using the Philippines as an example. It shows that since 2003, price increases have led to greater suffering for the poor, particularly the ultra poor. Read the full working paper .
Growing Rice in the Lao PDR
Lao PDR: An Evaluation Synthesis on Rice describes the importance of rice and rice production in the current cultural, social, and economic contexts; and future priorities for further rice development. See also Evaluation News .
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