A UN drive to cut sugar consumption and obesity in the West while funding sugar production in the Third World is damaging to poor nations, a lobby group said on Thursday, report the World Bank press review.
The United Nations aims to limit sugar consumption to less than 10 percent of daily energy needs, but diets of many Western teenagers contain more than double that rate. At the same time, the World Bank promotes sugar growing among poor nations.
– We are actually promoting increased production of a product…which we know, according to the WHO, that we should be reducing in our diet, said Neville Rigby of the International Obesity Task Force.
The World Bank, calling sugar “the most policy-distorted of all commodities”, is giving soft loans to poor countries, while the WTO is keeping up tariffs that bar Third World growers from key markets, he said.
According to World Bank estimates, trade distortions in the sugar industry cause annual subsidies of 6,4 billion US dollar to Western producers, denying small growers a 40 percent increase in income.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
