Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: The UN’s food agency said on Friday that global food prices declined last month for a 10th consecutive month and are down some 18% from a record high hit last March due to war in Ukraine.
The Food and Agriculture Organization’s price index, which tracks the globally traded food items, averaged 131.2 points in January against 132.2 for December, the UN’s food agency said.
UN Food Agency
It added that the December figure was revised downcast from an original estimate of 132.4. Falls in the prices of dairy, sugar, and vegetable oils helped pull down the index, while meat and cereals remained largely stable, the agency added.
The FAO cereal price index increased just 0.1% month-on-month in January to give a 4.8% increase on the year.
World wheat prices decreased 2.5% as production in Russia and Australia outpaced expectations. Rice, by contrast, increased 6.2%, driven in part by strong local demand in some Asian exporting nations.
Vegetable oil prices declined 2.9% in January, the dairy index dipped 1.4%, and sugar declined 1.1%. Meat slipped a mere 0.1%.
World cereal utilization in 2022 and 2023 was forecast to slope 0.7% from the last year to 2.78 billion tons.
