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Israeli central bank chief to be next IMF head?
ERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s central bank chief, Stanley Fischer, is interested in the top job at the International Monetary Fund and has received a number of phone calls in recent days from around the world encouraging him to apply, a person familiar with the banker’s thinking told The Associated Press on Sunday.
The person said Fischer has not decided whether to pursue the job and has no desire to leave his current post, but would have a hard time saying no to the IMF. “If the opportunity comes along, he will take it,” said the person.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because Fischer is still weighing his options. He said he expects Fischer to make a decision within the next two weeks.
Fischer, an internationally respected economist, held the No. 2 position at the IMF during the 1990s and is well acquainted with the workings of the fund.
Born in Zambia and educated at the London School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he also has held top jobs at the World Bank and at Citigroup Corp.
Fischer came to Israel in 2005 to take the post of governor of the Bank of Israel. He has been widely credited with enabling the country to largely escape the global economic crisis. Unemployment in Israel is just over 6 percent, and the real estate sector is booming.
Last year, he was appointed to a second five-year term.
Fischer has received phone calls from top IMF officials and officials from major finance ministries around the world encouraging him to seek the post, the person said. He refused to identify the countries or officials.
The post has traditionally gone to a European, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has emerged as the front-runner. Developing nations have argued that someone from another region should be considered.
The IMF’s last director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quit this month after he was accused of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid.
Global food prices ‘to double’ by 2030
OXFAM has called for the global food system to be overhauled in response to fears staple food prices could more than double over the next 20 years.
In a report, the charity predicts that prices of staple crops like wheat and maize will rise by 120 to 180 per cent by 2030.
It says the biggest driver will be climate change, which could account for as much as half the increase, the report says.
Other factors include the rising global population, changing diets, shortages of land and water and the use of crops for biofuels, it says.
Despite projections that demand for food will increase by 70 per cent by 2050, the growth rate in agriculture yields is set to decline to less than 1 per cent in the next decade.
“We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone,” Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive said.
“The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy.”
Oxfam is calling on governments across the globe to take actions to avert a potential food crisis.
These include moves to increase food production and build up reserves, as well greater transparency in commodity markets and regulation of futures markets. The report also calls for governments to end policies that promote biofuels and to invest in helping smallholders produce more.
It urges Governments due to meet meeting at a climate change summit in South Africa, in December to get global climate fund ‘up and running’ so people can ‘protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and are better equipped to grow the food they need’.
The World Bank warned in April that food prices were 36 per cent higher than a year ago, partly as a result of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, and this was pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
In its report, Oxfam highlights four ‘food insecurity hotspots’, areas which are already struggling to feed their citizens.
In Guatemala, for example 865,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, due to a lack of state investment in smallholder farmers, the charity says.
In India, people spend more than twice the proportion of their income on food than UK residents – paying the equivalent of £10 for a litre of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice.
In Azerbaijan, wheat production fell 33 per cent last year due to poor weather, forcing the country to import grains from Russia and Kazakhstan.
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