Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Editorials: Stability threatened by inflation
THERE is every reason for the national leadership to worry seriously about our republic’s social and political stability amid the food crisis. The problem may not be as grave if it were just a matter of domestic concern, but unfortunately, it is not.
The situation can be far more globally threatening than nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war.
Latest assessment in our country is that inflation in recent weeks has gone up to more than eight percent, a figure that our economists did not expect to be breached. But that it has, and it may still rise, is something that our national leaders should prepare for. The World Bank last month cited 33 countries being “threatened with social and political unrest because of the skyrocketing costs of food and energy.” We could be one of them.
In a story in this daily yesterday, the Asian Development Bank reported that the rising prices of food have devastated “the budgets of the poor and raising the specters of hunger and unrest….” It is estimated that “a billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging cost of daily staples, such as rice and bread. The billion “includes roughly about 600
million people who live on just under a dollar day” and 400 million just above it.
Last week, the British prime minister called on industrialized powers to do something immediately about the fast rising prices of basic commodities, “which has sparked mounting unrest around the globe.”
Asian economic analysts warned that Bangladesh and the Philippines, “where the poor currently spend around 70 percent of their income simply on food, will be among the first victims” of the socio-economic tsunami. They expected that there could now be serious discontent, violence and food riots due to the soaring food price spikes.” Indeed, use of troops in Manila to guard rice imports has attracted worldwide notice.
The experts are reportedly blaming a “confluence of factors, including increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertilizer cost,” as cause of the skyrocketing prices.
On May 1, it was pointed out workers campaigned “against high food prices as their May Day battle cry, marching through cities including the capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.”
