The Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Abdul Hakim Al-Waer, said that navigational disturbances in the Red Sea will raise food prices, not only at the region level, but at the global level.

Al-Waer explained, in statements reported by Arab media on Tuesday, that stopping smooth food supplies, especially through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, for a long period will affect global food prices, because many supplies will have to travel a distance many times what the ships traveled before the sea crisis. Red is in addition to the increase in demand during the summer and the difference in harvest seasons between the northern and southern hemispheres. He continued, “We have not yet noticed an increase or change in prices due to the Red Sea crisis, because we do not measure prices from the beginning of the crisis, but rather with the beginning of changing supply routes.” He pointed out that as countries run out of local stocks that they had accumulated during and after the Corona period, they will demand more grains that will have to travel long distances via the Cape of Good Hope sea route.

He said that a large part of the Arab countries are safe in terms of providing goods, especially those overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and the northern part of the Red Sea, and therefore they may not be affected by the disturbances taking place in the region, highlighting that the biggest affected are the countries of East Africa and the countries of Asia that depend on Supplies from the Red Sea.

Security and geopolitical tensions in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab region led to successive increases in a number of components of shipping costs, insurance, and ship fuel costs. According to data from the Suez Canal Authority, the freight loads of ships heading to the Red Sea ports rose to $6,800 per container, compared to about $750 per container before the crisis, in addition to the rise in ship fuel costs and the cost of ship insurance, which reached ten times the value of insurance before the crisis, which was Limited to $750 per container.