WFP concerned at food scarcity in Afghanistan

Frontier Post Report

PESHAWAR - World Food Program (WFP) has expressed serious concern over the deteriorating food security situation and the increasing cost of wheat in Afghanistan. It is to be mentioned that the food security situation in Afghanistan, particularly in Kabul, Hazarajat, Central Ghor and Badakhshan, has worsened. According to the latest UN report, the cost of wheat is on the increase which has been continuously increasing since the beginning of October this year and reached the highest level in the second week of December. Due to bad harvest in Afghanistan, market speculations and tightened border control in Pakistan, the prices of wheat have gone up, the report states. Pakistan is the major wheat supplier to Afghanistan. Twenty to forty per cent of the vulnerable households in Kandahar, Kabul, Ghazni and various food insecure rural areas in the south-eastern and Hazarajat have already been affected by the increase in prices, reveals the report. The price-hike of wheat flour is more severe in the areas of Kabul and Kandahar, where imports make up at least forty per cent of the cereal supply and where it has gone up by 83 and 88 per cent in the past ten weeks, adds the report. In Ghazni, the situation is more serious, the prices have increased by over 100 percent and recently there has been a severe shortage of wheat, adds the report. While prices in some Afghan cities fell at the news of the opening of the Iranian border on November 21, they again shot up one week after the announcement.