World Bank “secret report” blaming biofuels identified as “working paper”; errors in Guardian story revealed

A World Bank “secret report”, which blamed biofuels for a 75 percent increase in food prices, has been characterized by Bank officials as a “working paper” that was considered along with other working papers that helped formulate a World Bank report released last April.

World Bank officials said that a specific number was left out of the April report not for political reasons but because the report was still going through peer review.

The working paper’s author, economist Don Mitchell, told the Wall Street Journal that “I never saw [the omission] as political,” when asked about the omission of the 75 percent figure.

Further, the 75 percent figure quoted in the article represented 75 percent of the rise in food prices between 2002 and 2008, not a 75 percent rise in food prices, and was attributed to a combination of biofuels, low grain stocks, land use shifts, speculation and export curbs.

More background on the Guardian controversy is here.

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