Millions at risk of worsening poverty

A DOUBLING of food prices in the last three years could potentially put 100 million people in low income countries deeper into poverty and raise the global poverty rate as much as three to five percentage points, a senior World Bank official has warned.

“When it doesn’t include substitution and social assistance programs, poverty rates could potentially, according to preliminary data, show poverty rates rising three to five percentage points,” said Marcelo Giugale, director of the World Bank’s poverty reduction and economic management for the Latin America and Caribbean region.

“We are still in the preliminary analysis of all of this,” he said.