The Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2012 which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released on Friday even notes international food price rise has stalled progress across several of MDGs.[break]
The report says that the developing world has already achieved some MDGs, like reduction of extreme poverty and raising access to safe drinking water years ahead of the 2015 deadline. It is also well on the way of achieving targets on education and ratio of girls to boys in schools.
“But the developing countries remain significantly off-track on the MDGs to reduce mortality rates of children under five and mothers,” says the report, citing that these goals will not be met in any developing region by 2015.
According to the report, the developing countries have so far achieved only one-third of the targeted reduction of maternal mortality. Progress on reducing infant and child mortality is also dismal, as they have achieved only 50 per cent of the targeted decline.
“High and volatile food prices eroded consumer purchasing power and prevented millions of people from escaping poverty and hunger, besides having long term adverse impacts on health and education,” a statement quoted Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank´s Senior Vice President for Development Economics as saying.
Given the situation, the report has urged the global leaders to give high priority on dealing with food price volatility. It has also suggested the governments to deploy agricultural policies to encourage farmers to increase production.
The WB and IMF have also pushed for social safety nets to improve resilience and strengthening of nutritional policies to improve early childhood development. They have suggested developing countries to design trade policies that enhance access to food markets, reduce food price volatility and induce productivity gains.
Despite such suggestions, the report acknowledges the global financial crisis - which weakened low income countries´ fiscal, debt and current account positions - and global recession has made situation more difficult for poorer countries to respond to high food prices.
The report estimates 1.02 billion people will continue to live in extreme poverty in 2015, and urged the developed countries to step up assistances. More assistance would be required if the world is to improve food security and nutrition, particularly for the poor and the vulnerable.
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