This is a transcript of what was said by Corinne Fleischer, WFP director of supply chain (speaking from Rome via Zoom) – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today’s press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
The briefing highlighted the severe impact that conflict in the Middle East is having on the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Supply Chain operations as food deliveries to lifesaving operations around the world face long delays and increased costs. In the most significant disruption to humanitarian supply chains since Covid or the start of the war in Ukraine, WFP is warning that today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
GENEVA – Good morning, everyone. For us, this is the most significant disruption of supply chains that we have seen since COVID and at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The World Food Programme currently has 70,000 metric tons of food (around 154 million pounds) that is impacted by the war in the Middle East. About half of this is on chartered bulk vessels, and the other half is in containers, which are either en route or stuck in ports and not moving.
The impact is of course linked to the Strait of Hormuz. While the World Food Programme has no vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, we are impacted by the ripple effects of what’s happening there.
This has a whole upstream effect: Vessels being stuck in ports, not berthing properly, not leaving ports, containers not being offloaded. That leads to capacity constraints for containers — they are either not available or in the wrong place when they should be getting loaded. This is a whole disruption of the global supply chain. What we’ve seen after COVID is that it took four to five months to get back into place once the situation stabilized. We’re looking at a longer‑term situation where we will be impacted by higher costs and longer lead times.
Where we are directly impacted — and this goes beyond the Middle East — is into Africa, with carriers not using the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, and instead routing vessels through the Horn of Africa and the Cape of Good Hope into Eastern Africa. That adds about 25 to 30 days of shipping time, and between 15 to 25% in rates, because of longer operations, more fuel required, and of course more expensive fuel.
What WFP is doing right now is, first and foremost, we are asking carriers for priority cargo for humanitarian operations. We know the World Food Programme is the only UN organization with its own shipping department, directly engaging with shipping lines and vessel owners. This is something we do in these types of situations, and oftentimes it works.
Secondly, we’re trying to minimize the cost increases that we are seeing. We have negotiated a waiver for the surcharges that are being put in place by shipping lines and in certain ports at risk in the Middle East — between $2,000 and $4,000 per container. That’s around an additional $200 per metric ton. These surcharges have been waived, which gives us cost avoidance of about $1.5 million already. So this is a really great response we are getting from the shipping lines.
And then lastly, we are also rerouting cargo, and this is quite significant. I can give you an example. Afghanistan — 17 million people are food insecure and we need to get food there. We source quite a bit in Pakistan, which was impacted by the situation between Pakistan and Afghanistan. So we rerouted cargo to come in through Iran. While we were on the rerouting route to get into Bandar Abbas port in Iran, the war broke out. We had to divert the cargo to Jebel Ali in Dubai, and now we will truck it from Dubai through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, then into Turkmenistan and finally into Afghanistan. This adds about 1,000 euros per ton and another three weeks, but it also allows us to test and open a land route should this situation last longer.
Lastly, I want to say that we are very concerned about the long‑term impact this war has on people being able to put food on the table. The people we are concerned about are not those who go to fuel stations to fill up their cars. They are people who already spend between 50 and 70% of their income on food. If cost‑of‑living increases continue, as we are seeing in several countries, they will no longer be able to put food on the table.
Our projections are that 45 million more people will be acutely hungry if this continues through June. You’ve heard us say this before. Right now, the number is 318 million, and this will rise to 363 million. At the same time, financing for humanitarian operations is even lower than before, limiting our ability to support people in need.
We are very concerned about more needs, higher costs and the risk of not being able to reach people because of this combination. To give you a concrete example, in Lebanon we already see local transport costs going up by 45%. In Afghanistan, with all the rerouting we have to do, costs are tripling. This translates into higher food prices everywhere which is a big concern.
Thank you.
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The World Food Programme is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the world’s leading humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate extremes.Â
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This article was originally published on wfp.org
