Asia Clamps Down on Rice Profiteers
Agents at the National Bureau of Investigation have been taken off their usual duties of chasing kidnappers and tracking terrorist suspects to break up hoarding rings. Read More.
In the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo this week ordered a halt to the sale of subsidized rice through public markets. She enlisted instead the Roman Catholic Church to help distribute rice... Read More.In the Philippines, Ricardo Diaz, chief of staff at the intelligence division at the National Bureau of Investigation, was assigned to go after criminal syndicates hoarding rice... And in India, police have raided warehouses around New Delhi and Mumbai to prevent traders from illegally stashing large inventories of rice. Thai authorities have stepped up security to prevent thefts from government-controlled stockpiles...
A little glance at the rice fields in Asia's Philippines:
In India, the government buys rice at a minimum price and resells it at shops where poor people can buy food with ration cards. #
Fear & Panic Sparked Rice Inflation, and somehow I believe that the global climate change hysteria could have curiously set it off.Vichai Sriprasert, president of Riceland International, a leading rice exporter in Bangkok, said several of its customers, including governments, were buying far more than they usually did amid fears about scarcity. Story.
Rice prices hit the $1,000-a-tonne level for the first time on Thursday as panicking importers scrambled to secure supplies, exacerbating the tightness already provoked by export restrictions in Vietnam, India, Egypt, China and Cambodia.
Continuing Top food aid donor governments (metric tons)
United States: 4,026,382
EC: 623,231
China: 576,582
Japan: 402,868
RO Korea: 393,221
Canada: 275,498
Netherlands: 151,674
Australia: 151,476
Germany: 132,421
Sweden: 124,606
(06 figures at: www.wfp.org)
