European Parliamentarians Discuss Rising Food And Energy Prices

TIRANA, June 4 – Thirty-three Members of Parliament (MPs) from across Southeast, Central, and Eastern Europe discussed investment climate, rising food and energy prices, and aging and demography challenges in the region.
The Tirana meeting of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Chapter of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank (PNoWB) follows the 2006 founding of the Southeast Europe PNoWB Chapter in Greece, and the 2007 Europe and Central Asia meeting of parliamentarians in Bled, Slovenia.
Under the theme of “Looking Beyond Transition,” the meeting provided MPs a chance to share lessons and experiences of the transition from centrally planned to market economies, and European Union integration.
“The network offers a unique opportunity to establish stronger relations between the parliaments in the Region, as well as between the parliamentarians and the World Bank,” said Albanian Speaker Parliament Jozefina Topalli.
The Tirana MP meeting comes at a time when global issues, such as investment climate, the global food and energy price crisis, and impact of aging, are increasingly influencing the development agenda in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region.
MPs also expressed concern that efforts should go beyond narrow investment climate issues to good quality and ethical public sector conduct.
Participants discussed the substantial increase for food prices since 2007 that has boosted inflation. Food price inflation has varied across countries, rising between 2006 and 2007 from 5.6 to 13.8 percent in the new EU member states and from 6.5 to 20.3 percent in the middle income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.
The rising prices are largely due to a combination of last summer’s drought in many countries in the region, increased demand for grains for bio-fuels production in other parts of the world, increased cost of inputs for agriculture production, including for fertilizers and transportation, and others.
The rising food prices will have a larger impact in lower-income countries in the region while higher energy prices will hit middle-income countries harder, Bank officials said.
MPs exchanged views about the appropriate policy responses in the available toolkit of instruments, with dual objectives of providing needed food security measures to the poor and vulnerable, and of eliciting a supply response for the agricultural sector.
Major challenges face European and Central Asian countries, according to Shigeo Katsu, World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia. He said they now should compete for investment euros and dollars, dealing with the increase in food and energy prices, and with unprecedented demographic changes.
The Parliamentary Network on the World Bank is an independent organization of over 1000 parliamentarians from 110 countries, which mobilizes parliamentarians in the fight against global poverty, promotes transparency and accountability in international development, and offers a platform for policy dialogue between the World Bank and parliamentarians.