Panama set to meet hunger reduction goals

Panama, is one of the Latin American countries on track to meet reduction of hunger goals by 2015.

A study, released Tuesday September 10, by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that 49 million people in the world go hungry, including 7 million in Latin American and Caribbean countries But the data shows that there has been a decrease in the the number of hungry people in the region. 

In terms of percentage of total population the figure has fallen from 14.6% in 1990-1992, to 8.3% in 2010-2012.
Based on this data, the Latin America and Caribbean region is on track to achieve its goals of reducing hunger set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which aims to halve by 2015 the proportion of people hungry in the world.
The director general of the FAO, Jose Graziano da Silva, said at a press conference that the region has benefited from the economic growth, but growth "has not reduced poverty in the same proportion” as the reduction seen inother areas of the world such as Asia.
The report Says that Latin American countries that have already achieved or are expected to meet the 2015 targets are Cuba and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, and Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela on the mainland. By contrast, the FAO states that there has been progress, or there has been a deterioration in the case of countries such as Costa Rica, Guatemala and Paraguay and there has been insufficient progress in Haiti , Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and El Salvador. Globally FAO estimates that almost 870 million people undernourished and that the regions most affected by hunger are Southeast Asia, with 304 million, sub-Saharan Africa, with 234 million and East Asia, with 167 million.
The UN agency warned that the estimates released this year cannot be compared with those presented in previous editions of the study, as improvements have been made in the methodology used to obtain accurate data.