WFP appeals to donors for Myanmar food aid

BANGKOK (Reuters) - The World Food Program (WFP) appealed to donors on Monday to plug a funding gap which has slashed food aid to a more than quarter of a million people in army-ruled Myanmar.

"It's crunch time right now," Anthony Banbury, the WFP's regional director for Asia, told Reuters in an interview.

"We're supposed to reach 500,000 people now. We're only reaching 200,000 per month," he said.

The U.N. food agency has a three-year, $51.7 million plan to feed 1.6 million people in the former Burma, but has raised only $12.5 million from donors so far.

The junta has allowed some U.N. food shipments to resume after the WFP complained at the weekend about new restrictions imposed during a crackdown on the biggest mass protests against

military rule in nearly 20 years.

The demonstrations were triggered by a shock increase in fuel prices in August which have forced up prices of other commodities in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

"People are at the end of their rope in terms of the economic situation they are facing," said Banbury, who will visit WFP feeding programs in northern Shan State next week.

"These price rises hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest, and I think the reaction of the people to the price rises reflects how desperate they now are," he said.

Decades of military rule and economic mismanagement have nearly crippled the former rice bowl of Asia, where a third of young children are "chronically" malnourished.

"WFP should not have to be in Myanmar and I look forward to the day when our assistance is no longer needed there," Banbury said.

"But that day won't come until the economic polices have changed and people are allowed to trade and move freely and pursue their own economic livelihood."