The World Bank has downgraded Sri Lanka from an upper-middle income country to a lower-middle income one.
The move comes under the World Bank’s 2020-2021 country classification by income level, exactly a year after Sri Lanka was classified in the upper-middle income category.
Sri Lanka is among ten economies that are moving to a different category this year and is one of three countries that are moving to a lower category from the previous year. Algeria and Sudan are the other two countries moving to a lower category along with Sri Lanka.
The World Bank says Sri Lanka was downgraded as a lower-middle income country after it recorded USD 4020 per capita income for 2020, in comparison to the USD 4060 last year, which resulted in the country being classified in the upper-middle income category in 2019.
On its latest classifications, the World Bank emphasized that its income classifications use the GNI (Gross National Income) of the previous year (2019 in this case).
The Bank noted that the GNI numbers that are used for this year’s classification do not yet reflect the impact of COVID-19.
The world’s economies are assigned into four income groups—low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income countries by the World Bank. (Newswire)
