The Asian Development Bank pledged on Tuesday to provide $14 billion in loans over four years to improve food security in poor countries in Asia-Pacific amid rising global prices and climate change. The bank, which provides loans and grants to the poorest countries in the Asia-Pacific region, said the financing would target – among other things – food production and distribution, as well as projects aimed at mitigating the effects negatives of climate change.
In detail, this type of financing is expected to reach $3.3 billion this year, and $10.7 billion from 2023 to 2025, said the bank, which brings together 49 members – from the Cook Islands in the Pacific to the in Kazakhstan in Central Asia – and which until now allocated around two billion dollars of loans per year to projects related to food security.
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“Food insecurity threatens to undo decades of development progress in Asia and the PacificAsian Development Bank President Masatsugu Asakawa told a virtual press conference. At present, there are many factors explaining the “deterioration of the situation“, underlined Masatsugu Asakawa, referring in particular to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the Covid-19 pandemic, which have disrupted supply chains and contributed to pushing food prices towards “record levels“.
And “we must also bear in mind that the current food security crisis will worsen even further if we fail to tackle climate change“added Masatsugu Asakawa, believing that this battle would be”won or lost in Asia and the Pacific“. According to him, just over a billion people in the regionlack healthy food due to poverty and high food prices“.
The institution’s announcement comes after the bank recently cut its 2022 growth forecast for the region to 4.3% from its April projection of 5.2%, particularly concerned about the effects increasingly restrictive monetary policies in many countries to curb inflation or even repeated confinements in China, follower of a so-called “zero covid“. The bank also raised its inflation forecast for 2022 from 3.7% to 4.5%.
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