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MADRID, Spain (AP) – The Asian Development Bank announced emergency funding Saturday to help poor countries struggling with rice prices that have nearly tripled in four months.

The aid will come in the form of “sizable” soft loans for countries hardest hit by the global food crisis, such as Bangladesh, the bank’s President Haruhiko Kuroda said, declining to provide exact figures. But he warned that even after the current crisis passes, prices may keep rising.

“The cheap food era may be over,” Kuroda said.

Asia is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor, and nearly 1.7 billion people in the region live on $2 a day or less. Asia’s poor are particularly vulnerable to rising prices for staples, such as rice, because 60 percent of their spending goes toward food, and the figure rises to 75 percent if fuel costs are included, the bank said.