By Bernama,
Yekaterinburg (Russia) : Refuting claims by western leaders that the current food crisis was caused by the growing consumption in India and China, BRIC Foreign Ministers Friday sought a “just” global economy keeping in view interests of all nations, Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
“There are multiple reasons for the current food crisis, primarily due to recent cyclones in Bangladesh and Myanmar, which destroyed the entire rice crops in these countries, also exporters of rice. Now they have to import rice instead of exporting it,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said during the deliberations on the issue at the ministerial meet of Brazil, Russia, India and China (B.R.I.C.) here.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reminded that the share of China’s food imports in the global food trade was only two percent and his country was also the donor of food to needy nations.
Blasting the claims that production of bio-fuel by his country was among the reasons for the food crisis, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim pointed out: “Brazil has been producing bio-fuel for more than 30 years, but there was no food crisis in the world.”
He blamed the agriculture subsidies to their farmers by the developed nations for the miserable state of agriculture in the developing nations.
The Foreign Ministers of the four countries, including Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, called for a “just” global economy keeping in view interests of all nations as they rubbished claims that the food crisis was caused by the growing consumption in India and China.
US President George W Bush earlier this month joined his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in blaming the rising prosperity of India’s huge middle class for the spiralling global food prices.
Prosperity in countries like India is “good” but it triggers increased demand for “better nutrition” which in turn leads to higher food prices, Bush had said.