Rising costs will force families to skip meals, warns UN special advocate Queen Maxima of the Netherlands
REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
- Families may skip meals to cope with rising costs, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands told CNBC.
- The UN special advocate said inflation could fuel instability in many regions of the world.
- She stressed the importance of digital solutions in improving the situation.
Families may have to skip meals to cope with the rising cost of living engulfing many parts of the world, UN special advocate, Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, told CNBC.
"An increase of food prices of the magnitude that we're seeing, of energy prices, basically will mean that a lot of families are going to have from three or two meals a day to have one meal a day," Maxima told the outlet last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
She added that inflation could be the source of even greater instability in many regions of the world.
Maxima, the UN secretary-general's special advocate for inclusive finance for development, attended the forum to discuss the role of "digital financial services in promoting financial health and increased economic opportunities," the Royal House of Netherlands said.
According to the World Bank's latest commodity markets report, the war in Ukraine has spurred the biggest price shock in nearly 50 years and the impact on food and energy is set to last until 2024.
The queen, who is an economist and previously worked in international finance, told CNBC that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated extreme poverty, highlighting the impact of recent, "very worrying" price jumps in fertilizer.
"When you don't have fertilizers, you cannot increase your yield," she told the outlet. "So, you're going to have less food, so the prices are even probably going to go up by even more."
She stressed the importance of digital solutions, trialed in many ways during the pandemic, as a key part of any recovery.
"There is a very big connection between the affordability and accessibility to digital solutions as well, to be able to have people financially included," she told CNBC.
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