News South Asia

Bangladesh moves up in World Bank′s latest income survey

The World Bank’s latest estimates of Gross National Income per capita (GNI) continue to show improved economic performance in many low-income countries, with Bangladesh being one of several countries moving up into the lower-middle income bracket, joining those with annual incomes of $1,046 to $4,125.

People living in low-income countries continue to fall behind those in the upper per capita GNI brackets, while they earn and consume significantly less than much of the world’s population.

Gross National Income (GNI) is a broad-based measure of income generated by a nation’s residents from international and domestic activity. GNI per capita measures the average amount of resources available to persons residing in a given economy, and reflects the average economic well-being of a population.

Each year on July 1, the World Bank revises the income classification of the world's economies based on estimates of GNI per capita for the previous year. The World Bank also uses the updated GNI per capita estimates in its operational classification of economies that determines lending eligibility.

“While we need to measure development progress in different ways, income-based measures, such as GNI, remain the central yardstick for assessing economic performance,” said Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President. “Our latest data show that in terms of this indicator, the world’s economic geography has changed a lot. In 1994, 56.1% of the world’s population – 3.1 billion people - lived in the 64 low-income countries. In 2014, this was down to 8.5%, or 613 million people, living in 31 countries. It is heartening to see that over the last one year itself four nations crossed over that critical line from the low-income to the lower-middle income category.”

In addition to the new income-related data, other indicators have been updated in the World Development Indicators (WDI) database, including estimates of purchasing power parities for 2014, gross domestic product, balance of payments, monetary indicators, military expenditure, CO2 emissions, air traffic, foreign direct investment, merchandise trade, and more.

Note that these are preliminary estimates and may be revised. Country classifications are determined once a year and remain fixed, regardless of subsequent revisions to their estimates of their GNI per capita.