Opposition spokeswoman on foreign affairs and foreign trade Lisa Hanna has renewed her call on the Government to urgently establish a food and energy crisis task force to forecast and plan for further global economic fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Making her contribution to the 2022 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, the Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern pointed to Jamaica’s vulnerability and dependency on international trade for raw materials, food production, and oil.

“This is not going to get any better; it is actually going to get worse. We cannot adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Instead, we must be proactive and strategic now to ensure that Jamaica globally repositions ourselves and look at the opportunities that we have in terms of competition globally,” she stressed.

Hanna pointed out that, with the world’s largest economies imposing financial sanctions on Russian banks and other developments associated with Russia’s war on Ukraine, there is a devastating impact on the production of exported food.

“Unfortunately, when I said it [in February], many Jamaicans didn’t understand what that alarm was, and what they said was, ‘A nuh fi wi war,’ but the fact was, war impacts everybody globally, including Jamaica, and there is a broader long-term geopolitical and economic implication that this form of conflict affects, and that is our global supply chains, and that is our energy and food sectors,” she argued.

Hannah said approximately 50 countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for about 30 per cent of their wheat import needs.

“Although this war is thousands of miles away, it has already had devastating effects on other people’s personal lives worldwide. The pockets of the poor have been hit the worst, and Jamaicans have not escaped the fallout,” she stated, pointing to the ballooning of global oil prices, which has affected almost all aspects of the economy, from commercial and domestic electricity to transportation and food production.