Bangladesh urges cooperation to ensure food security

DHAKA, July 8 (Reuters) - Bangladesh called for cooperation among regional countries on Tuesday to ensure food security for vulnerable people in the least developed nations.

"Both food and oil are now big challenges for countries like us, and no one can face the challenges alone as these are a recent global source of tension," Mirza Azizul Islam, adviser (minister) for finance and planning, told a conference.

"Efforts to cool soaring prices of food grains and oil are directly linked with the poverty alleviation programmes," he said, while inaugurating a regional meeting on alleviating poverty.

Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand are members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

Ministers and government officials discussed strategies to alleviate poverty, such as substantially raising cereal output, a a senior Bangladeshi official attending the meeting said.

"Each member state has undertaken various measures over the past decades to alleviate poverty with varied experiences as poverty varies from country to country and that will be shared," Azizul said.

He said that the dramatic increase in the price of food grains, fuel and fertiliser had given rise to "ugly inflation" and food supply was under strain.

"These factors add urgency to effective regional cooperation to meet the threat to food security," Azizul said, adding that countries should also explore trade and business opportunities.

Large countries such as India, Pakistan and Thailand could liberalise their markets that would enable poor countries to increase their exports.