World Bank says food crisis puts 100 m people at risk of poverty

NIGERIA: The World Bank has said that global food crisis will push 100 million people into poverty, except there is an annual intervention of 696 billion naira (about 6 billion U.S.dollars).

According to the News Agency of Nigeria, Okonjo-Iweala, World Bank managing director, called on Monday in Accra, Ghana, on the international community to improve its contributions to the World Food Program, whose funding needs had almost doubled this year.

“We cannot afford to let the world’s attention drift. People are still hurting from high food prices,” Okonjo-Iweala was quoted saying in Accra on the eve of the World Bank’ss High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.

Okonjo-Iweala, who was Nigeria’s first female minister of finance, said there was a need for immediate action to drop all forms of restrictions on food assistance to the poor.

“Ending restrictions would help bring relief to millions of people suffering from high food prices and would be a concrete sign of the international community’s commitment to making aid more effective.

LAGOS, Wednesday,

Xinhua