World Bank downgrades Sri Lanka as a 'lower-middle income' country

Sri Lanka has been downgraded from an upper-middle income country to a lower-middle income one under the World Bank's country classification by income level, exactly a year after it was classified in the upper-middle income category. 

The change in classification comes in the World Bank's 2020-2021 country classifications by income level. 

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.  

Sri Lanka's was downgraded as a lower-middle income country after it recorded USD 4020 per capita income for 2020, down from USD 4060 last year, which resulted in the country being classified in the upper-middle income category by the World Bank in 2019.

In giving 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). "Thus, the GNI numbers that are used for this year’s classification do not yet reflect the impact of COVID-19," it noted. 

The World Bank assigns the world’s economies to four income groups—low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income countries.