Mustafa Yağmurlu Editor

Dear readers, We are together again with our 41th issue.

The coronavirus pandemic, which broke out in Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019, continues increasing its negative effects in many countries. The global total number of coronavirus cases has exceeded 53 million and the number of people who died of Covid-19 exceeded 1 million 300 thousand in mid-November. Many countries that could not slow down the pandemic started to impose restrictions again. Some countries are implementing full quarantine while others are taking additional measures. While the pandemic is constantly accelerating, food prices began to increase rapidly around the world in the recent period. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) October Global Food Price Index, food prices continued to rise for the five consecutive month, particularly for grains, sugar, dairy products and vegetable oils. The deterioration caused by Covid-19 in world trade balances and the rapid rise in global agricultural commodity prices led many countries to stock wheat. Since it was not predictable how long the process would continue, many countries, with fear, resort to product supply. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt initiated simultaneous import tenders. Even Pakistan, which is not used to be a wheat importer, started to provide wheat with imports. In an environment of embroiled global commodity markets, the statement made by the world's leading US pharmaceutical company Pfizer was a source of morale. Pfizer announced that the experimental coronavirus vaccine developed in cooperation with the German company BionTech SE was successful in the final stage of clinical trials. In the interim data of the study conducted with more than 43 thousand volunteers, it was stated that the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective. With the optimism created by the vaccine news, the expectation of an increase in demand for oil was reflected in the prices. As gold prices fall, I predict that the demand for global food prices will slow down with the emergence of the results of the vaccine studies and the rapid and successive increase in the last 5 months will cease.

Hope to meet you in our next issue...