The Asian Development Bank on Tuesday criticised rice export bans, saying governments should instead resort to fiscal measures to help the poor, as prices of the staple continued to climb. While Indonesia promised more support to its farmers to encourage them to sell their produce to the government, signs China may extend rice exports this year came as a relief for the market scrambling for cargoes after bans by India and Vietnam.

Even as the World Trade Organisation director general Pascal Lamy is expecting a break-through in the Doha Round negotiations in the next few weeks, several countries, including India, are expected to factor in rising food prices and use of bio-fuels in their discussions. However, this will not necessarily lead to a change in the strategies of individual countries on tariffs and subsidies, an official in the know of developments at WTO said.

China released a draft of its food-safety law that includes imposing the death penalty as the government of the world's most populous nation seeks to boost confidence in its products. Companies that make and sell unsafe food or additives face fines of 10 to 20 times the profits made in non-criminal cases. Violators may also face life in prison or the death penalty, based on China's criminal code, the rules said.

AMID the intense suffering and pain generated by food inflation, our understanding of its causes is getting murkier. This issue is, predictably but unfortunately, getting increasingly politicised. Any sound and sustainable solution requires a sound understanding of the issue. Food inflation is now a macro and global phenomenon. Global price developments are pushing food prices higher all over the world. But vocal and populist, and often fact-free, debates at home are suggesting otherwise.

Egypt is to review its food subsidy system as it seeks ways to tackle rising inflation, which reached 14.2 per cent in March. Youssef Boutros-Ghali, finance minister, told the Financial Times that the government would look to raise additional revenues through new taxes or increasing existing taxes. However, he said corporate taxes, which were reduced in recent years as part of wider economic reforms, would not be altered, adding that no tariffs that impacted "on profit and production" would be increased.

The government is going to construct new warehouses and repair old ones soon to enhance the storage capacity of food, Food and Disaster Management Adviser A M M Shawkat Ali said yesterday. The initiative has been taken up since the existing storage capacity will not be enough to store the targeted amount of food grains.

AND all nations came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain because everywhere the famine was severe:" Genesis 41:57 The Old Testament. The World Bank chief, Robert Zoellick, recently said that the demand for ethanol, droughts in Australia and Europe, financial market speculation, and increased demand for food due to rising incomes in China and India, has significantly contributed to "soaring" food prices around the world.

Record global food prices will be on the agenda of the Group of Eight heads of state summit in July for the first time in almost 30 years, amid mounting concerns about the social, political and economic impact of the food crisis. The International Monetary Fund on Monday gave its starkest warning about the impact of rising commodities, saying food and oil prices "risk becoming a destabilising force in the global economy'. Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's prime minister, said in a letter to his G8 colleagues that soaring food prices were posing "imminent and serious' global challenges.

Despite acknowledging the fact that there is little evidence to link the price rise to futures trading, Avijit Sen panel has taken the safe route on the politically sensitive issue, and maintanied that freeze on futures trading of rice, wheat, urad and tur should continue.

THE world's top food trading companies are doing brisk business here as the country gears up to deal with shortages. The four biggest international grain traders