Urgent Steps Needed to Curb Rising Food and Other Commodity Prices, UN Warns
UN News Centre
Senior United Nations officials at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (called for urgent steps to rein in the rising prices for basic farm produce, petroleum and raw industrial materials whose volatility hits the world’s poorest people the hardest. For billions of people, the cost of meeting daily food needs takes up a significant proportion of the family income, UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré indicated. “We must therefore work together to ensure the long-term sustainability of the production and marketing of commodities,” he said, calling careful monitoring of the markets “vital.” The forum brings together Government ministers, heads of leading commodity exchanges, representatives of major banks and commodity producing/trading companies, and providers of commodity trade support services.