US envoy says food aid needs may have been underestimated

Ethiopia may have underestimated the amount of food aid it will require this year, the US ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Friday. During a five-day visit to the country, Tony Hall said he believed the scale of food aid needs was "a lot more serious" than the government had estimated - it had aimed to provide help to only 2.2 million people. "I think the issue of people that need help has probably been underestimated,” he told reporters. "All I know is the food is not here yet, and I think the word will have to go out to the donors that it is probably a lot more serious than anticipated. "[Some Ethiopians] aren’t getting any food. They don’t have any money. They can’t buy it and they are slipping," he warned. Hall said he thought the harvest had not been as good as predicted, although he added that no revised estimates of the numbers in need had been calculated as yet. Initial harvest projections this year had showed a bumper crop in the region of 14 million mt of cereals - close to a 23 percent increase on the average over the last five years. "They expected a better harvest and it didn’t turn out like that, so there are more people that are going to need emergency aid," the ambassador explained. This year more than seven million Ethiopian people will need support from foreign countries to overcome hunger, according to the government and the UN. Some 2.2 million people will require emergency food aid, while a further 5.1 million people will need both food and cash as part of a complementary system known as the "safety nets" scheme. Five main donor countries have been funding the scheme, which aims to end dependency, but distributions to Ethiopians have been delayed since January. Hall praised the safety nets scheme, but said that some people were not getting food. "We want the government to take a real good look at that to ensure these people do not slip between the cracks," he added. "We agree with the government of Ethiopia that we don’t want food dependence. We want to help break that cycle." He also dismissed claims made by opposition groups that the low food-aid numbers may have been politically motivated because of the forthcoming national elections on 15 May. "The government here has been very honest in the past. I think they have been very much upfront with some of their catastrophes and some of the droughts they have had before. "I don’t think it is politically motivated. I can’t believe any government would try to hide that people are going to suffer here," Hall added.