BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 13. Low and low-to-middle income countries in Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caucasus would be worst hit by the first-round impact of the situation in Ukraine, the S&P Global Ratings told Trend.
The official said that the agency examined which rated sovereigns are the largest cumulative food importers, relative to their own GDP, of the key grain and seed-oil items most significantly affected by the conflict
“Given that emerging markets have limited capacity to replace these imports with substitutes, adjustment to the price shock will translate to lower consumption for the 770 million people that the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) had already stated were undernourished before the conflict. That could, under some scenarios, raise the risk of social instability in countries that are large importers in relation to their GDP,” the S&P Global Ratings said.
For some of those countries, the agency said, the reliance on Ukraine and/or Russia within their supply chains will amplify the disruption.
“The three Caucasus nations, for example—Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Armenia—look particularly exposed through their almost complete reliance on Russia for these five key food commodities, should sanctions or self-sanctioning complicate trade. Similarly, the four Arab states—Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan—each rely nontrivially on Ukraine for their food supply and are therefore susceptible to war-induced disruption to ports and processing activities,” the agency added.