NEPAL: Fuel shortage threat to food security

Nepal’s acute fuel shortage is causing serious concern among local food traders about its impact on food prices.

“The shortage of fuel has been affecting the cost of our transportation. We can expect further increases in food prices which could heavily affect poor families,” Ravi Sharma, a local food trader, who supplies rice and other food from the Terai region (fertile plains of southern Nepal) to the hill areas of the country, told IRIN in the capital.

Many food traders explained that commodity supplies had seriously deteriorated and expected the situation to worsen.

IrinNews