High food prices could last three years: World Bank official

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

SINGAPORE (AFP) — The prices of staple foods such as rice could stay high for the next three years, hindering the battle against poverty, a top World Bank official said Tuesday.

Food prices had risen at a "startling" speed, giving governments and communities little time to respond, the bank's managing director Juan Jose Daboub said.

"This phenomenon is here to stay for a few years. This is not a few weeks, a few months thing. It could be two or three years... It's not a short-term phenomenon," Daboub told reporters at a forum in Singapore.

Escalating global prices of foodstuffs such as corn, rice and wheat have sparked protests in many countries, including in Asia, and raised the fear that many of the world's poor face hunger.

"For those who live in...