The Bhutanese prime minister, Lyonchhen Jigmi Y Thinley welcomed the establishment of a SAARC food bank and called it a “very meaningful” and “timely initiative”.

“My delegation also fully endorses the Colombo statement on food security, which clearly demonstrates our collective resolve and solidarity to address the challenges posed by rising food prices,” he said in his opening address at the summit.

Lyonchhen Jigmi Thinley said that soaring food prices are causing severe hardship, social unrest and suffering to millions all over the world, particularly among poor and vulnerable sections of the region’s societies. “This reinforces the need to redouble our efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger, particularly through agriculture and rural development.”

In view of the emerging global situation of reduced food availability and rise in food prices, the leaders have directed an extraordinary meeting of the agriculture ministers of SAARC member states to convene in New Delhi in November this year to evolve and implement a people-centred, short to medium term, regional strategy and collaborative projects.

The leaders also directed that the SAARC food bank, which would store more than 250,000 metric tones (MT) of stock for distribution in case of a particular scarcity within the South Asian region, should be immediately operationalised.

The chairman of the 15th summit and the president of Sri Lanka, Mr Mahindra Rajapaksa, at the concluding ceremony, said, “Given the seriousness of the subject of food security, we felt that it deserves to be addressed through a special statement released along with the Colombo declaration.”

With the set up of a food bank in the region, it is expected to increase food production, encourage investment in agriculture and agro-based industries, agricultural research and prevention of soil health degradation, development and sharing of agriculture technologies, and management of climatic and disease-related risks in agriculture.

Leaders at the summit also emphasised an early drawing up of a SAARC agriculture perspective 2020 and further directed that the SAARC region should forge greater cooperation with the international community to ensure availability and nutrition security in South Asia.

The secretary to the ministry of trade, marketing development, cooperatives and consumer affairs in Sri Lanka, Dr R M K Ratnayaka, earlier told media that the member countries can seek assistance from the food bank or maintain food stocks in their countries in case of an emergency by giving three months notice to the member countries and the food bank.

The SAARC region, with a population of about 1.5 billion, is considered to be among the worst affected by food crises and the high cost of living due to soaring oil prices.

Speaking to Kuensel, Lyonchhen Jigmi Thinley said that Bhutan was self sufficient in food in the past but people became dependent on food import, mainly because of changing food consumption patterns, which had to do with economic development in Bhutan and the buying power of Bhutanese individuals.

“For instance, everybody in Bhutan now wants to eat rice and eats rice. Earlier, many Bhutanese didn’t eat rice, our staple was different,” he told Kuensel. “Why we have food crisis is not due to production going down but because food consumption has gone up substantially mainly due to growing prosperity.”

He added that the Bhutanese agriculture sector in the Tenth Plan had its mandate to raise food production.