SIERRA LEONE: WFP warning on food price increases

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

A mother prepares food whilst her young boy sleeps on a straw matt beside her in the village of Foinda, central Sierra Leone

DAKAR, 17 March 2008 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) says that food prices have increased sharply in Sierra Leone and warns that any further rise could “badly impact [on] the majority of the population” in what the UN has judged to be the world’s least developed country.

In December 2007, the cost of rice increased by 40 percent compared to December 2006, WFP said in a statement on 14 March.

In the same period, the price of palm oil increased by about 50 percent, and bread by 25 percent.

“Domestic cereal harvests meet about 67 percent of consumption needs,” the WFP statement said.

“The annual consumption gap, to be filled through commercial imports and food aid, is estimated at 175,000 tonnes.”

Sierra Leone was ranked last in the 2007 UN Development Programme human development index. Fifty-two percent of people there live on less than US$1 per day.

If price rises continue one of the hardest hit groups would be some 120,000 smallholder farming households who produced less than 50 percent of their rice consumption requirement for the year in 2007, WFP said.

Another highly vulnerable group is 20,000 low-income urban households.

WFP says high commodity prices are caused by rising demand for food from economic growth in countries such as China and India, competition between bio-fuels and food, higher energy prices and increased climatic shocks like droughts and floods.

Higher food prices have already caused social unrest in a number of countries in West Africa, especially Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Senegal.

Meanwhile, food reserves are at their lowest in 30 years and commodity markets are “extremely volatile”, WFP says. It is also struggling to feed existing beneficiaries as it too has to pay higher prices for food.

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