DUSHANBE, October 19, 2009, Asia-Plus — A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009, released last week, notes that in Tajikistan’s labor migrants’ remittances are estimated at some 46 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the UN News Center.
According to the report, under the scenario based on a 50 percent reduction in employment of labor migrants, a percentage of people living below poverty line will increase from 53.1 to 59.6 percent in Tajikistan that means a 12.2 percent rise in poverty in the country. In this case, the absolute poverty will rise 6.4 percent to 56.5 percent.
The report says the rural population will suffer more than the urban one.
The report notes that 2009 has been a devastating year for the world’s hungry, marking a significant worsening of an already disappointing trend in global food security since 1996. The global economic slowdown, following on the heels of the food crisis in 2006–08, has deprived an additional 100 million people of access to adequate food. There have been marked increases in hunger in all of the world’s major regions, and more than one billion people are now estimated to be undernourished.
The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009 presents the latest statistics on global undernourishment and concludes that structural problems of underinvestment have impeded progress toward the World Food Summit goal and the first Millennium Development Goal hunger reduction target. This disappointing state of affairs has been exacerbated by first the food crisis and now the global economic crisis that, together, have increased the number of undernourished people in the world to more that one billion for the first time since 1970. This crisis is different from the crisis developing countries have experienced in the past, because it is affecting the entire world simultaneously and because developing countries today are more integrated into the global economy than in the past. In the context of the enormous financial pressures faced by governments, the twin-track approach remains an effective way to address growing levels of hunger in the world. Investments in the agriculture sector, especially for public goods, will be critical if hunger is to be eradicated.
In the meantime, according to the State Committee for Statistics, the volumes of remittances to banks in Tajikistan have amounted to 1.303 billion U.S. dollars over the first nine months of this year, which is 35 percent fewer than in the same period of last year.
