April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Finance ministers from around the world warned that surging food costs threaten to reverse progress on poverty reduction and backed World Bank calls for more funds to fight hunger.

Soaring food prices and seizure in credit markets topped the agenda at this weekend's meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Policy makers gathering in Washington said the rising threat of hunger demanded a global response and sought to fill the $500 million gap identified by the United Nations World Food Program.

``We need a common effort to attenuate the immediate undersupply due to rising prices,'' German Economy Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said. ``For every percentage increase in food prices, an additional 16 million people are threatened with hunger.''

As officials from rich nations discussed ways to improve the oversight of securities firms amid the credit squeeze, their counterparts from developing nations warned that political unrest may follow if the food scarcity and expenses worsen. Global food prices surged 57 percent last month from a year earlier, according to the UN, and the World Bank warns civil disturbances may be triggered in 33 countries.

In the past five years, as the global economy accelerated, the number of people living on $1 or less a day has declined by 150 million, according to the World Bank. Those gains may be reversed unless rich countries step up their donations, officials said.

Social Unrest

``The issue of the food prices is one of the most urgent and immediate problems faced by Africa,'' said Benedicte Christensen, acting director of the IMF's Africa department.

Governments from Guatemala to the Philippines to Indonesia are seeking to combat food inflation and avoid social unrest by curbing exports or lifting import duties on basic food staples such as rice. Brazil called for an end to farm subsidies in developed countries that create price distortions and leave millions of agricultural producers out of work in poorer nations.

``We join the appeal for a rapid emergency response sufficient to bridge the food supply gap,'' Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said. ``The world's agricultural trading system is stuck in the past.''

Riots related to a surge in food prices led to the fall of Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis yesterday. Alexis, an ally of President Rene Preval, was voted out of office by the country's senate, after lawmakers cited his lack of ``leadership'' and solutions to ease food shortages, according to Efe newswire of Spain.

$10 Million in Aid

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that the fall of the government in Haiti ``underscores the importance of quick international action.'' The bank pledged $10 million to Haiti for feeding programs.

The World Bank estimates that a doubling of food prices in the past three years could push 100 million people into deeper poverty. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned that if food inflation kept accelerating at its current rate, hundreds of thousands of people will starve.

``The political stability in a lot of countries is at stake,'' Strauss-Kahn said today. ``Already some governments are suffering from critics on the streets even though the governments are not responsible for higher food prices.''

Consumer-price inflation in poor or so-called developing countries will accelerate this year to 7.4 percent, compared with a January forecast of 6.4 percent, the IMF said this week. Food prices will probably remain comparatively high until at least 2015, the World Bank said in a separate report.

Expanding Trade

Some finance chiefs said trade liberalization could help bring down food prices in the long-run. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling called for a renewed effort to pass the struggling Doha Round of trade talks.

``We should redouble our efforts for a WTO trade deal that provides greater access by poor countries to developed-country markets and cuts distortion subsidies in rich countries,'' U.K. officials led by Darling, said in a statement.

Germany's Wieczorek-Zeul said that fully opening markets in rich countries to imports would lead to ``greater food security in developing countries by making it more worthwhile for them to cultivate agricultural produce.''

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said developing economies had a responsibility to address the crisis, too. He urged them to ``resist the temptation'' of capping or subsidizing food prices because such policies are ``generally not effective.''

Unintended Consequences

Rice, the staple food for half the world, has surged 96 percent in the past year, reaching a record $21.60 per 100 pounds on April 8. That's forced China, Egypt, Vietnam and India, which export more than a third of the world's rice, to curb shipments of the grain. Argentina and Russia have also sought to discourage food exports in a bid to boost domestic supplies.

Such measures ``tend to create fiscal burdens and economic distortions while often providing aid to higher-income consumers or commercial interests other than the intended beneficiaries,'' Paulson said.

Several ministers said the rise in food prices was related to increased production of biofuels. ``In a world where there is hunger and poverty, there is no justification for diverting food crops to biofuels,'' Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.

Saudi Arabian Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf, without directly naming the U.S. government's support for the corn-based ethanol industry, called on countries to ``withdraw subsidies for the production of commercially unviable biofuels.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Swann in Washington at cswann1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 13, 2008 16:51 EDT