UN: Price surge pushed more than 70 million people into poverty in three months

Soaring global food and energy prices plunged 71 million people, mostly in low-income countries, into poverty since March, in other words in just three months, the United Nations Development Program reveals ( PNUD) which is releasing data on the development today.

The expansion of poverty “is markedly faster than when the shock of the novel coronavirus pandemic occurred,” the UNDP press release said, which partially attributed the rise in inflation to the war in Ukraine, despite denials. of Russia.

According to this UN Programme, “targeted cash transfers to households are fairer than generalized energy subsidies”. The UNDP considers at the same time that the affected countries need support from the international system to find fiscal space, to “get by”.

“As interest rates rise in response to the rapid rise in inflation, there is a risk that new poverty will be created by the recession, further exacerbating the crisis, accelerating and deepening poverty around the world,” the Program warns in its report.

UNDP looks at the situation in 159 countries. The states where the situation is most critical are those of the Balkans, the Caspian and sub-Saharan Africa, especially those of the Sahel.

“Unprecedented rapid price increases mean that for many people around the world, the food they were able to buy yesterday is no longer affordable today,” UNDP head Achim Steiner said in a press release.

“This cost-of-living crisis is crippling millions of people, pushing them into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed.” At the same time, the “threat of increasing social unrest is increasing day by day”.

Among the countries facing the most dramatic consequences of rising prices are Armenia, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Haiti, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Yemen.

SOURCE: APE-ME