WASHINGTON, April 14: The president of the World Bank has warned that developing nations cannot wait till the next G-8 meeting in June for help to deal with a food crisis which is threatening to spread chaos across the globe.

Robert B. Zoellick made this observation at a news conference on Sunday evening after the bank’s Development Committee approved his proposal for providing immediate and mid-term assistance to the affected nations feed their poor.

Finance ministers of the world’s major economic powers, who meet in Japan in June this year, are expected to endorse the bank’s appeal for assistance.

“But, frankly speaking, that G-8 meeting of finance ministers is in June, and we cannot afford to wait,” said Mr Zoellick while emphasising the need to provide immediate assistance to those facing an acute food shortage.

“We have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It’s as stark as that,” he added.

“What is at stake is, of course, people starving that’s the first problem — maybe the biggest one — but then it’s also all that has been done trying to help development in the last decade,” said Dominique Strauss Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF. “And what is even more at stake is the political stability of a lot of countries.”

The World Bank’s proposal, called the new deal on global food policy, urges governments to fill the $500 million food gap identified by the UN’s World Food Programme.

Under the deal, the World Bank would nearly double agricultural lending to Sub-Saharan Africa over the next year to $800 million to substantially increase crop productivity.