Policy responses

Price controls and restrictions on private grain trade and hoarding
- Sri Lanka: announced retail and wholesale prices of all varieties of rice, fixed maximum price levels
- Senegal released assorted grains to the market and announced price controls
- Malawi announced that all maize sales will be done through the state agricultural marketing corporation (ADMARC) and fixed the price at which it will buy and sell maize
- Cote d'Ivoire announced emergency measures to cut prices of food and basic services
- Malaysia imposed ceiling prices on rice sold to consumers and raised the guaranteed minimum price for growers
- Phillippines introduced "Anti-Rice-Hoarding Task Force" to seek out hoarders and punish them with life sentences for "economic sabotage" or "plunder"
- Ecuador set of a system of controls and monitoring of prices including policy checks across the food supply chain
- Pakistan: provincial government of Punjab implemented administrative measures to limit the flow of wheat to other provinces

Links and references

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ISFP/pdf_for_site_Country_Response_to_the_Food_Security.pdf

Pros In the short-run: can halt increasing prices, at least in the formal marketing channels.

Cons In the medium to long-run: costly and difficult in case there is no adequate public stock levels or imported supply to meed the demand at government-fixed prices. Prices fixed at low levels are likely to discourage domestic production and create a black market.