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Two weeks created 44 million new poor in South-East Asia
The Australian - October 14, 2008
Mark Dodd – More than 44 million people in Southeast Asia have in just two weeks been consigned to poverty by the "triple hit" of the global financial crisis, rocketing fuel costs and rising food prices.
As the impact of the contagion began making itself felt in Asia, the real human toll was expected to run into "hundreds of millions", the UN World Food Program warned yesterday.
From Afghanistan to East Timor, hunger and malnutrition was on the rise again, the WFP's Asian spokesman, Paul Risley told The Australian.
Adding to the tide of humanitarian woes, cyclone-ravaged Burma was facing a rat plague that threatened its food stocks, Mr Risley said.
The global financial meltdown has particularly hit low-income groups ranging from small-scale suppliers of car parts to the armies of regional construction workers, with job losses at all levels of the regional economies.
"Forty-four million people in Asia are in immediate risk – that is, have already dropped into poverty just as a result of the last two weeks' financial worries as Asian stock markets lose their value," Mr Risley said.
"That all correlates into dropped income levels. The effect of the Chinese slowdown immediately affects the Southeast Asian countries that are suppliers to the Chinese economic machine. It is not only Australia which has an export connection."
Chinese authorities announced yesterday that growth was likely to slow to 9 per cent next year, down 1 per cent from this year, but said growth would be driven by domestic consumption, with exports having a negligible effect.
The WFP spent $US3 billion last year to feed about 90 million of the world's most desperately hungry people. That cost has doubled, Mr Risley said.
Visiting Canberra to encourage the federal Government's overseas aid commitment, Mr Risley said Australia was the WFP's most important strategic partner in the Asian region.
Australia provided $US61 million in aid last year, $US20 million of which was earmarked for disaster relief. "When a disaster occurs, Australia is there with immediate budget support when we need it," he said.
Not only governments are being asked to contribute to the WFP's over-stretched coffers. This week, the world's largest restaurant company, Yum Foods, owner of KFC and Pizza Hut, would be kicking off the first WFP appeal for private-sector help in offsetting the effects of the latest food crisis, Mr Risley said.
To help put the food crisis in perspective, Mr Risley said the $US700 billion ($1 trillion) US bank bailout fund would feed all of the world's poor for the next 100 years.
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