By Amin Ahmed

ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: Pakistan is among the seven countries around the globe where two-thirds of world’s undernourished live, reveals the hunger figure contained in the ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World’ to be jointly published next month by two UN agencies dealing with food.

Bangladesh, China, Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia and India are the six other countries. Asia and the Pacific has become the region with the most under-nourished people with 578 million whereas new estimates of the number of people who will suffer chronic hunger this year is 925 million 98 million down from 1.023 billion in 2009.

These figures were released on Tuesday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in advance of the September 20-22 Summit meeting in New York called to speed progress towards achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first of which is to end poverty and hunger.

The two UN agencies stated that the number of hungry people in the world remains unacceptably high despite expected recent gains that have pushed the figure below one billion.

The 2010 lower global hunger number resulted largely from renewed economic growth expected this year particularly in developing countries and the drop in food prices since mid-2008. The recent increase in food prices, if it continues, will create obstacles in the further reduction of hunger.

Of the eight Millennium Development Goals solemnly agreed by the UN in 2000, MDG-I pledged to halve the proportion of hungry people from 20 to 10 per cent by 2015. With five years to go, that proportion currently stands at 16 per cent, however.

Globally, the 2010 hunger figure marked a decline of 9.6 per cent from the 2009 level. This reduction was mostly concentrated in Asia, where 80 million fewer people were estimated to be going hungry this year.

In sub-Saharan Africa the drop was much smaller about 12 million and one out of three people there would continue to be undernourished.

The joint FAO-WFP report noted that the global cereal harvests have been strong for the past several years, even as the number of undernourished people was rising. The overall improvement in food security in 2010 is thus primarily a result of better access to food due to the improvement in economic conditions, particularly in developing countries, combined with lower food prices.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that world economic output will increase by 4.2 per cent in 2010, faster than previously expected, following a contraction of 0.6 per cent in 2009. In general, income is growing faster in emerging economies and developing countries than it is in developed countries. The World Bank estimates that private capital inflows to developing countries are also increasing faster than originally expected.

In parallel, international and domestic cereal prices have declined from their 2008 peaks, reflecting two consecutive years of record yields. While production in 2010 is forecast to be lower, the overall supply situation is considered as adequate.

However, food prices in most low-income food-deficit countries remain above the pre-crisis level, negatively affecting access to food by vulnerable populations, the report stated.