Downing Street Says » World food prices

» Monday, April 21, 2008

World food prices

Asked if the group of people the Prime Minister would be meeting this week regarding food prices would include the head of the World Food Programme, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that the head of the World Food Programme was not on his list of attendees but that the meeting included some people from Oxford University, representatives from the retail sector, the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Save the Children and others.

Put that the Prime Minister had mentioned in Washington last week that he planned to have a meeting with the World Food Programme, the PMS replied that he would check if there was going to be a representative from the World Food Programme at the meeting.

Asked what the purpose of the meeting was, the PMS replied that the meeting would follow on from the letter the Prime Minister had written the week before last to discuss the strategy, short and longer term, regarding the problem of rising global food prices.

Asked if there was anything the Government had in mind that it could actually do, the PMS said that there were a number of things we were discussing with our international partners at the G8, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and elsewhere. We were looking at the impact of global food prices on the world economy and some of the underlying causes of higher food prices, such as bio-fuels. We were also looking at what could be done by the IMF and the World Bank to mitigate the impact of higher food prices.

Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned about the rising cost of food here, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister was concerned about the impact of rising food prices on both the global economy and the domestic economy.

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