N.Korea planning to ration foodgrains -UN official
Wed Oct 5, 2005
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea might stop the sale of foodgrains on the open market and return to a rationing system where the staple will only be provided through distribution centers, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme said.
The move comes after the impoverished state said it no longer wanted direct emergency food handouts from aid agencies and was looking to build a more self-sufficient food sector.
Analysts have said a rationing system set by the government for foodgrains would also help strengthen the hand of Pyongyang's leaders.
"Our understanding is that later this month, product trading in grains will no longer be allowed," Gerald Bourke, a spokesman for the WFP based in Beijing, said on Wednesday.
The buying and selling of grains such as rice at markets was part of economic liberalization measures rolled out in 2002.
The WFP has said that prices of staples such as rice had increased since then, making it harder for North Korea's poor to buy basic foodstuffs.
"Since 2002, the distance between the have and the have-nots in North Korea has grown larger," Bourke said by telephone.
"The change in the grain market being implemented seems to be aimed at making it easier for those who suffered most in the market reforms to be better taken care of," Bourke said.
North Korea provides a daily ration now of about 250 grams of grain, or less than two bowls of rice, with its citizens using their own money to buy more staples at the market.
Bourke said the daily grain ration might increase to about 500 grams to 700 grams a day.
North Korea's severe food shortage has eased with the help of a good harvest this year but international aid is still needed because the country does not produce enough to feed itself, the U.N. agency said in a recent report.
Bourke said the move toward rationing was part of North Korean efforts to rely less on handouts and more on itself to feed its population.
North Korea indicated in September it wanted all humanitarian food assistance from international agencies to stop by the end of this year, aid agency officials said.
The North will still accept direct aid from South Korea, which provides its neighbor with massive amounts of rice with far fewer monitoring visits than the WFP.
More than one million North Koreans are thought to have died in a famine in the mid-1990s triggered by bad harvests, flooding and mismanagement of the agricultural sector.
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