Former World Bank chief asks China to stop hoarding food and fertiliser

A former World Bank chief has warned against China hoarding food and fertiliser at a time when global supply chains have been severely disrupted by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

“They have the biggest world stockpile of food stuffs and of fertiliser,” David Malpass, president of the World Bank from 2019 to 2023, told the BBC, referring to China.

The Asian manufacturing giant is one of the world’s largest fertiliser ‌exporters, shipping $13bn worth of it last year.

Just weeks after the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Lebanon forced Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the planet’s most critical maritime trade routes, Beijing restricted fertiliser exports to protect its domestic market, putting additional ​strain on global markets already grappling with shortages.

The closure of the strait, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies as well as a large volume of fertiliser before the war, has caused commodity prices to skyrocket.

In mid-March, Beijing banned the export of nitrogen-potassium fertiliser blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources told Reuters.

Mr Malpass, US treasury undersecretary for international affairs during Donald Trump’s first term, said Beijing’s claim of being a developing nation was no longer credible.

"They present themselves as a developing country when they are the second biggest economy in the world and in many ways rich," he said on the eve of Mr Trump’s visit to China.

"And yet they still have the pretence of being a developing country in the WTO and in the World Bank, and they could suspend that," Mr Malpass told BBC .

His comments were rejected by Chinese officials. “China is committed to maintaining the stability of global food and fertiliser markets,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in an emailed statement to the BBC.

He added that Beijing should not be blamed for global supply-chain disruptions. “The root causes behind the current disruptions in global food and fertiliser supply chains are crystal clear,” Mr Liu argued. “This blame cannot be shifted onto China."

To Mr Malpass’s remark that China should be regarded as a developing nation, the spokesperson said: "China is universally recognised as the largest developing country, a designation grounded in ample factual evidence. Upholding its status as a developing country is a legitimate right of China.”

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