KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Senior Board Members of Anametrics Holdings Limited, an International Business Corporation registered from the Republic of Marshall Islands witnessed the Joint Promoters of ASEAN Food Hub, Dr. Chutamas Vongvorakit and Mr. Nazifuddin Dato' Sri Najib exchange joint collaboration documents at a ceremony to announce the initiative at Menara Standard Chartered here today.
ASEAN Food Hub is a cross border initiative, collectively designed and developed to provide a vital hub linking ASEAN countries via a Private Joint Venture endeavour. Hunger reduction requires an integrated approach, and needs to include: public and private investments to raise agricultural productivity; better access to inputs, land, services, technologies and markets; measures to promote rural development; social protection for the most vulnerable, including strengthening their resilience to conflicts and natural disasters; and specific nutrition programmes, particularly to address micronutrient deficiencies in mothers and children.
The latest FAO estimates indicate that global hunger reduction continues: about 805 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished in 2012–14, down more than 100 million over the last decade, and 209 million lower than in 1990-92. In the same period, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 18.7 to 11.3 percent globally and from 23.4 to 13.5 percent for developing countries. Despite overall progress, marked differences across regions persist. Latin America and the Caribbean have made the greatest overall progress in increasing food security with modest progress in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia, which have been afflicted by natural disasters and conflicts.
The Promoters hopes to eradicate hunger "in real terms" and strategically push the numbers to a lower threshold via their current endeavour. A positive spin off from these activities is the potential of eradicating poverty in areas where income generation is a key social concern. Objectively, the initiative intends to provide a platform from which ASEAN would serve as a launching pad for an intra-related commercial development by its members that would encourage the development, cultivation and distribution of food and related supportive industries to be developed on a higher benchmark, that is yet to be achieved anywhere in the world.
