Olam International’s Group MD: Rising food prices drive demand for commodities

The biggest challenge confronting global development today is the declining supply of food and rising food prices.  Multiple factors have been the cause of this problem and have exacerbated the situation. These include population growth, urbanisation, rise in per capita income, demand for biofuels and climate change. Mr Sunny Verghese, Group Managing Director of Olam International, shared that the problem of escalating food prices was not a cyclical one, but one which was the result of imbalances between the overall demand and supply of natural resources. Mr Verghese was invited to deliver a keynote address titled, “Food price inflation: Cyclical or structural?” at SMU yesterday. The conference was jointly organised by SMU and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT).