A lot of countries have to cope with the issue of food inflation and it was a flashpoint of the Arab Spring.
MCLEAN, VA, US: This is with reference to your report of May 6 titled “Food inflation beyond national control: Shaikh”. A lot of countries have to cope with the issue of food inflation and it was a flashpoint of the Arab Spring.
Yet it is not enough to say we can’t do anything about it. We can. We can take some supply-side measures. We can improve marketing channels and make a pretense, if nothing else, to crack down on smugglers and hoarders. And the competition commission can swing into action and conduct raids on warehouses and watch out for predatory pricing, and so on.
Food exports are trickier to deal with. Bans and/or quotas won’t work. What can work is giving incentives to producers to sell in the domestic market.
Meekal Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, May 8th, 2011.
