Southeast Asia: Rice and food price crisis

Prices of rice and other basic food items are increasing in the world. The global food price crisis is affecting millions, possibly billions of people. Food policies are challenged. Governments are imposing emergency measures to calm down their restless constituents. The Southeast Asian region, home to several emerging and developing economies, is also struggling to cope with the situation. For want of a better title more or less sums up the problem in the region: “The biggest problem with our rising rice prices is that it’s more a distribution error than a problem with the rice yields. It’s more about politics than it is about agriculture…What’s probably going to happen though is an even higher rise in rice prices. The thing about a necessary product is that when price goes up, people buy more. And since they’re spending more on rice, they’ll spend less on the things that accompany that rice.” Even Singapore, one of Asia's richest countries, i...