Russia’s war in Ukraine will lead to slower than expected growth across the developing world this year and next, pushing millions into extreme poverty and raising the risk of a debt crisis in low and middle-income countries, the World Bank has warned.
The fallout from the war will exacerbate the effects of the pandemic, leaving 75mn more people in extreme poverty than expected in 2019, the bank warned in its latest economic outlook, published on Tuesday.
“At the beginning of the year we expected things to be bad,” said Ayhan Kose, head of the bank’s economic forecasting unit. “Now they are going from bad to worse, and the policy response will be critical to avoid them going from worse to much worse.”