THE Asian Development Bank will make "sizeable" loans to help countries in Asia and the Pacific meet the cost of higher food prices.

"Rising food and fuel prices have placed many governments in the region under significant pressure to put food on the table of the poor and vulnerable," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said at a briefing in Madrid. "The ADB will provide immediate budgetary support to the hardest hit countries."

Global food prices surged 57 percent in March from a year earlier, according to the United Nations. Asia's poorest countries including Bangladesh and Tajikistan have borne the brunt of the increases, Kuroda told Bloomberg News.

He didn't specify the amount the bank would lend to governments to offset the effect of higher food prices, saying that it would be "sizeable."

The ADB will lend US$1 billion in each of 2008 and 2009 to develop irrigation and other rural infrastructure, he said.

Kuroda opposes plans by Thailand and Vietnam, the two nations that supply almost half of global rice exports, to set up a cartel to manage supplies amid near-record prices.

"The agriculture market should be market-driven," Kuroda said. "Any kind of cartel isn't good for the exporters and the importers."

Vietnam and other rice-producing nations have curtailed exports to maintain supplies and cool local inflation, pushing up prices for buyers such as the Philippines, the world's biggest importer of the grain. Corn, wheat and soybean prices have all reached records this year, too. Rice prices have more than doubled in the past year.

The World Bank expects the food price increases to trigger civil disturbances in 33 countries.