UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced the price drop Thursday after a trilateral meeting in Lviv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"We are seeing signs that global food markets are stabilizing. Wheat prices have fallen 8% since the agreements were signed. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index fell 9 percent in July, the biggest drop since 2008," the U.N. secretary general said.
Most food items are now sold "at prices below prewar levels, but still very high," he added, referring to Russia's war against Ukraine.
He added that the first U.N.-chartered ship carrying Ukrainian wheat is en route "to meet the needs of people suffering the worst drought in decades on the Somali Peninsula in Africa."
"But don't be under any illusions - there is a long way to go before this translates into daily life for people in local bakeries and in their markets," Guterres said, noting that supply chains are broken and energy and transportation costs remain unacceptably high.
At the same time, "the positive momentum on the food front," he said, reflects a victory for diplomacy and multilateralism and benefits people in crisis as well as "the hard-working farmers of Ukraine."
Earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Russia and Ukraine to "show a spirit of compromise" to ensure the continued success of the UN-brokered agreement.
PigUA.info by latifundist.com