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Home / Bioethanol / News Kazakh leader says speculation behind world food crisisBBC Monitoring Central Asia Excerpt from report by privately-owned Kazakhstan Today news agency website Astana, 19 May: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev believes that speculation is the main cause of the world food crisis. The president said this at a soiree about Kazakhstan held within the framework of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East in the Egyptian city of Sharm al-Shaykh on Sunday [18 May], the [Kazakhstan Today] news agency says referring to the Kazakh presidential press service. «Changes in climate or production of bioethanol are said to be the causes of these cataclysms. However, in my view, intense speculation is also the main cause,» Nazarbayev said. «The world financial crisis has forced speculators to withdraw huge funds from stock markets and to invest them into exchange goods. For the first time in history, this list includes not only traditional oil and gold, but also grain and sugar,» he said. The president said that «the financial crisis, expensive oil and a sudden rise in prices for food resources will, in many respects, determine politics in the world in the near future». «If the international financial crisis is a problem, then the world food crisis is a tragedy for millions of people living on [this] planet. The sudden rise in prices of wheat, rice and maize have already provoked public discontent in dozens of countries,» the president said. [Passage omitted: high prices for energy resources cause inflation in the world]
Source: Kazakhstan Today news agency website, Almaty, in Russian 0915 gmt 19 May 08
Date: 19.05.2008 Leave your comment
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