The United Nations food agency's world price index rose in April for the first time is a year, led by higher prices for sugar, meat, and rice that offset declines in the cereals, dairy, and vegetable oil price indices. The overall price index is still around 20 per cent up on a record high hit in March 2022 following the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 127.2 points last month against 126.5 for March. The March reading was originally given as 126.9.
At that level, the Index was 19.7 percent below its level in April 2022, but still 5.2 percent higher than in April 2021.
The sugar price index surged 17.6 per cent from March, hitting its highest level since October 2011. The Rome-based agency said the rise was linked to concerns of tighter supplies following downward revisions to production forecasts for India and China, along with lower-than-earlier-expected outputs in Thailand and the European Union, according to news agency Reuters.
The prices of sugar have increased due to a decline in overall production compounded by deteriorating weather and volatile market conditions. Raw sugar prices were trading at an 11-year high, and the Indian sugar prices surged for the fourth straight month in April.
While the FAO meat index rose 1.3 per cent month-on-month, dairy prices dipped 1.7 per cent, vegetable oil prices fell 1.3 per cent and the cereal price index shed 1.7 per cent, with a decline in world prices of all major grains outweighing an increase in rice prices.
The FAO forecast world wheat production in 2023 of 785 million tonnes, slightly below 2022 levels, still the second largest outturn on record.
FAO raised its forecast for world cereal production in 2022 to 2.785 billion tonnes from a previous 2.777 billion, just 1 per cent down from the previous year. World cereal utilisation in the 2022/23 period was seen at 2.780 billion tonnes, FAO said, down 0.7 per cent from 2021/22.
