Source: CCTV.com

05-09-2008 10:26

The World Bank has predicted that global food prices will continue to surge. And World Bank President Robert Zoellick says the US should take this into consideration when formulating domestic policies.

The World Bank has predicted that global food prices will continue to surge.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick is predicting the continuance of soaring food prices worldwide. In an official visit to Mexico on Wednesday, Zoellick explained that global food prices have surged in recent years, causing hunger, riots and hoarding in poor countries. And he says the US should consider how rising food prices hurt the world's poor when it sets policies that funnel much of its corn into biofuel production.

Zoellick said, "The country has to assess the effect of that on the overall set of humanitarian issues in terms of the price of food products."

The US Congress last year passed legislation that would require the country's gas supply to include 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. At the moment, more than a quarter of the US corn crop is turned into biofuel.

Zoellick said, "Our rough economic forecast is that we hope that there would be some supply response that might bring some other prices down a little bit in 2009 - 2010, but in general we believe that price levels through 2015 will be higher than the price levels in 2004."

Zoellick also adds that forecasts for the coming years are not encouraging. Last week, the World Bank pledged, along with UN agencies, to set up a task force to tackle soaring global food prices.

 

Editor:Du Xiaodan