Poor nations should reject the advice they are getting from institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, and work instead towards food sovereignty.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it is responding to the global food crisis by doling out new emergency loans to 15 of the world’s poorest nations, mostly in Africa.
But the new loans carry the same controversial conditions, such as tariff and subsidies cuts, that many analysts now agree are partly to blame for the soaring inflation and inability of developing country governments to cope, reported Ipsnews.net.
Mark Plant, deputy director of the IMF’s Policy Development and Review Department, told an IMF publication last week that the so-called Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF), which the fund uses to disburse fast loans in emergency situations, would be open for business to the world’s poorest nations by June.
Already 15 countries are talking to the Washington-based IMF about tapping loans from the program, which is designed to offset expenses and budget imbalances incurred from shuffling expenditures to ease food prices in poor nations.
The IMF official said that in addition to the emergency program, developing countries suffering high food prices could also receive advance loans from the more traditional Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, the loan framework under which poor countries typically have to agree to revamp their economies in return for IMF cash.
But analysts say that both loan programmes could in fact make a bad situation worse. The conditions that these two programs share include trade liberalization, cutting social spending, trimming subsidies to local producers and limiting bailouts to troubled national sectors.
Under those conditions, international financial institutions such as the IMF and its sister institution the World Bank helped force developing countries to dismantle much of their agricultural tariff systems, allowing in huge quantities of cheaper farm goods from Europe and the United States.
Critics say this effectively sabotaged national food security systems and has left poor countries ever more reliant on food imports and defenseless in the face of the latest price increases.
Today, according to figures from the Global Policy Forum, nearly three in four developing countries are net importers of food.
Food import surges have had an especially harsh impact on rural poor and local economies in Africa. Also, rising food prices are having their biggest impact on poor people in low-income developing countries. Rice prices have reached record levels, while wheat prices have nearly tripled and corn doubled since 2000.
Some 33 countries, most in Sub-Saharan Africa, which already carries the world’s heaviest debt burden, have been particularly affected. New loans from the ESF could further plunge these nations into the red.
IMF policy advice to eliminate tariffs on some food items, as Plant has advocated, would simply continue to discourage local production and put poor countries even more at the mercy of international commodity markets over which they have no control.
It is unclear whether pushing more funds in the form of new loans in the market will ease prices, although such a move would likely fatten profits for international food companies, traders and speculators.
As part of its package to deal with the crisis, the IMF is also arguing that poor nations redirect new subsidies only to the poor while removing subsidies to petroleum products, an argument that overlooks the major impact of fuel on food prices.
The IMF insists that it is offering varied advice to suit different countries and avoid destabilizing their economies.
But food security activists say that poor nations should reject the advice they are getting from institutions such as the IMF and World Bank and work instead towards “food sovereignty“.

The World Trade Organization has published new draft plans for a global trade deal to be discussed at the next meeting of trade ministers.
The text made no major changes to proposals on tariff and subsidy cuts made previously, BBC wrote.
But offering compromises and clarity on key sticking points, the WTO is hopeful that it will bring the debate a step closer to resolution.
Negotiators are hoping to strike a deal by the end of the year.
“These revised negotiating texts illustrate clearly where convergence lies among the WTO members and where we have more work to do,“ said WTO director-general Pascal Lamy.
“We are getting closer to our end game,“ he added.
The WTO has been trying to bring an end to its current round of free trade talks, which began in Qatar in 2001.
Advocates of a deal say it would help end poverty in developing countries, while rich countries could also benefit if they can sell more goods and services abroad.

Oil prices are likely to continue to rise reaching an average of $140.4 per barrel by the final quarter of this year should non-OPEC supply fail to meet pessimistic forecast, according to the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES).
According to IRNA, in its latest monthly oil report, the London-based center said benchmark Brent dated crude would average the current record of more than 120 dpb for the year if OPEC’s production profile and global demands are maintained.
“The world needs more crude oil to meet demand and restore inventories,“ the report warned. “Non-OPEC supply in 2008 has already begun to fall well short of earlier expectations,“ it said.
CGES referred to “substantial“ risks to non-OPEC production, including rising production in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan acting only to offset Russian production losses and concern about the ability of Mexico, Australia and Brazil to increase supplies in 2008.
“These worries lend themselves to the construction of a case in which seemingly robust global oil demand is affected adversely by soaring oil prices,“ it said.

The World Bank is refusing to loan money to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar, saying the country has been in arrears with the bank since 1998, bank officials said.
Representatives of The World Bank will attend a donor conference organized by the United Nations and the Association of South-East Asian Nations, but “cannot legally provide any resources,“ the bank’s Managing Director Juan Jose Daboub told Ihe Daily Telegraph in London.
Myanmar’s ruling military junta has provided assistance to only 20 percent of the cyclone’s 2.5 million survivors who are in desperate need of food, water and shelter, the report said.
Beggars line the streets along roads in the Irrawaddy Delta, but the government has distributed newspapers asking motorists not to help, as it will “make them lazy and dependent on others“, the Telegraph reported Tuesday.
The military government has also blocked foreign aid, fearing it will undermine their authority, the report said

Illegal workers spend nearly $1.8 trillion in the US each year, a Texas research group said.
The Perryman Group said Texas alone would lose 1.2 million illegal workers and $220.7 billion in annual spending if undocumented workers left the country, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Ray Perryman, president of the firm, said the United States needed “comprehensive reform“ of its immigration laws.
“If undocumented workers vanished “you would have serious economic upset,“ Charles Foster, chairman of Americans for Immigration Reform, said this week.
But others disagree.
A Washington group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, believes undocumented workers take jobs away from US citizens by accepting deflated wages.