Soaring food and energy prices are raising the risk of social unrest but attempting to tame costs through tax cuts, subsidies and price controls would be too costly, the IMF said Wednesday. The fund’s comments, in its latest Fiscal Monitor report, come as food prices have surged by half since 2019 while energy bills have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Countries all around the world are facing more pressing and more painful trade offs,” Vitor Gaspar, director of IMF’s fiscal affairs department, told AFP. The combination of inflation along with food and energy price surges point to a cost-of-living crisis, he said. The global economy has been hit by multiple shocks in the past year. Countries spent heavily to protect their economies during the pandemic, then faced supply chain issues as they emerged from Covid lockdowns. Inflation soared further after Russia invaded Ukraine, with food and energy prices going through the roof. “Households are struggling with elevated food and energy prices, raising the risk of social unrest,” the IMF report said. But, it added, “fiscal policy trade-offs are increasingly difficult, especially for high-debt countries where responses to the Covid-19 pandemic exhausted their fiscal space.”