"The price of food could soar worldwide. The gloomy prospects are already evident. India, a food exporting country, has now turned into a food importing country. In China, steady shrinkage of arable lands due to excessive demands of lands for industrial complexes has resulted in decline for farm products.

The present global grain stocks are at their lowest in the past 30 years. India and China are appearing to be reaching a point at which nothing short of a bumper crop could prevent a crisis. However, higher farm prices are not bad for all. It will boost the income of farmers in developing nations who have gained very little from the growth of manufacturing and services sectors."

"China is increasingly recognizing the strengths of NGOs in reaching out to disadvantaged groups. Beijing has traditionally been cautious towards NGOs, but the government is experimenting in Jiangxi with sub-contracting some of its poverty relief work to NGOs, through a bidding process. The selected NGOs go to their assigned villages to listen to residents about how they want their 500,000 yuan in government aid to be spent. They then help implement the plans.

The project hardly appears revolutionary -- Jinzhu residents are using their cash to help build two roads, upgrade the water supply, and install a small bridge and a public toilet. But the step of transferring government funds to the bank account of a civil society organization, for it to spend on behalf of citizens, could be seen as undercutting the power of local officials to control the purse strings."

"The 14th SAARC summit in New Delhi will be hailed as a landmark for a variety of reasons. For the first time in its 22-year history, it witnessed an expansion by formally inducting Afghanistan as its 8th member. Five other counties, China, Japan, Korea, the United States and the EU, attended the Summit as observers.

The Delhi summit has left its marks. It signed an agreement to establish a South Asian University. It decided to set up a SAARC Food Bank and resolved to operationalize the South Asian Development fund. It decided to take immediate steps to improve connectivity between the member countries. It also identified water, energy, food and environment as key areas for the next six months."

"Some economists believe that even if the US consumer fades, the growing wealth of a billion Chinese consumers will compensate and enable the rest of the region to merrily carry on. Although official data say there are 577 million urban residents in China, many of those are farmers living on urban fringes, or in towns where income levels are a world apart from the major cities.

China's domestic growth has been led by infrastructure development and construction, both heavy users of metals and minerals. Even on the consumption side, the biggest impact of higher incomes has been on food consumption -- the shift to higher value-added foods requiring more inputs of other commodities -- and housing. The fact that Chinese growth has had a huge impact on commodity prices should not lead one to assume that it will play a similar role in stimulating global demand for consumer goods."

"For an Asian country, India's savings rate is not impressive. Personal credit growth is rocketing, and unlike the previous generation, people are not afraid to take out big loans for flat-screen TVs and unaffordable houses. Automobiles are overcrowding before the roads are even built and Indian researchers are worrying more about obesity and cholesterol than hunger and poverty.

Nowhere in the recent economic history of India, has an issue been so well debated and polarized as the inflation/overheating debate. Now, the question has changed slightly from 'is India overheating' to whether Indian central bank is correctly handling the overheating. If left unchecked, the current overheating could rock the Indian boat. Inflation has spiked from around 4% to over 6% now."

"Cambodia this week convened a seminar named 'Avoid the Oil Curse,' in an effort to prepare legal and theoretical frameworks for the expected influx of oil revenues around 2010. Cambodia is trying to find legal assistance and techniques from international institutions to help to prepare the law.

Experts and technicians at the seminar warned that Cambodia needs to keep its expectation under control, as it still remains unclear exactly how much oil is under the sea and whether the country can become a significant energy producer at last. Oil revenues are also expected to give equal benefits and chances to all Cambodians and not to cause rebellious movement on basis of inequality and injustice."

"The Papua New Guinea government needs to continue its prudent management of debt over the medium-to-long term in order to mitigate risks to public debt sustainability, the International Monetary Fund has said. The public sector debt ratio declined from 67.4 percent at the end of 2003 to an estimated 39.3 percent of gross domestic product at the end of last year.

This improvement reflects prudent fiscal policy, favorable mineral sector developments, kina appreciation and lower interest rates. Last year, the government implemented a debt strategy, which helped to improve debt sustainability, reduce financial risk of the debt portfolio, and develop the Inscribed Stock, Bill and Loan Markets."

"Health officials are keen to stem rising rates of malaria in Kyrgyzstan and prevent a serious outbreak, the likes of which the country experienced in 2002. In response to a rise in cases, the government has adopted a national anti-malaria strategy for up to 2010. But the fight against malaria still faces challenges.

Many problems are common to a declining healthcare system, such as a brain drain of health workers, who earn low salaries in Kyrgyzstan, and limited medical facilities. The country is vulnerable to the disease due to internal and external migration for seasonal work and a prevalence of breeding grounds for malaria such as rice fields, swamps and reservoirs."

"Indonesia this week successfully launched its first domestically produced tsunami early warning buoy after six months of cross-industry work. The equipment is designed to provide a warning within three minutes of a tsunami wave being detected at the bottom of the ocean.

Indonesia needs at least 22 or 24 buoys to cover the areas where tsunamis could be expected. Only two buoys have been placed in the water so far. The early warning system is comprised of two main parts, a buoy unit that floats on the surface of the ocean, and a bottom unit placed about 2,000 to 6,000 meters below the surface on the sea bed."

"India, under pressure to cool inflation running near two-year highs, banned new wheat and rice futures contracts in its fledgling exchanges in February in a bid to check speculation and -- hopefully -- tame prices. But while farmers are unfamiliar with electronically-traded futures, the ban could be bad news for them because there could be less price transparency and fewer private buyers.

The bans on the futures market also prevents farmers from optimizing their resources as the lack of advance information on crop prices means farmers can't determine whether they should plant wheat or opt for other crops such as cotton which might be more lucrative when harvest time comes around. This year, many farmers have sold their wheat crops to brokers and middlemen even before the harvest, hoping the advance will help as they struggle to cope with rising fertilizer and fuel prices."

"Despite urgent appeals by aid agencies, over 200,000 Tamil people who fled their homes last month continue to languish in squalid refugee camps. A lack of facilities in the makeshift shelters, a growing shortage of food, torrential rain and over-crowding are making living conditions unbearable and has turned the refugee camps into breeding ground for disease. Human feces, garbage and over crowding are creating serious health hazards in the camps.

Relief agencies say their operations in the war-torn eastern district lacks tents, medicine, baby food and clothes for the IDPs (Internally Displaced People). According to the UN's World Food Program, it can only look after the food needs of 100,000 IDPs through April and there are an estimated 240,000 IDPs in the district. The recent torrential rain has worsened the situation with several temporary shelters in Mankadu, Erivil, Kaluvanchikudy, Thethathivu and Vedar Kudiruppu collapsing."

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