Online Media Briefing Center (OMBC) news for accredited journalists
Highlights
The World Bank Group is highly concerned with Uganda’s enactment of the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act. If implemented, the Act would endanger people by placing an added barrier to vital medical care, disease screening, and precautions.
Domestic food price inflation remains high around the world. Information from the latest month between January 2023 and April 2023 for which food price inflation data are available shows high inflation in most low- and middle-income countries, with inflation higher than 5% in in 70.6% of low-income countries, 81.4% of lower-middle-income countries, and 84% of upper-middle-income countries, with many experiencing double-digit inflation.
Thank you for all for joining us this morning. Today’s subject, debt transparency and sustainability, is one that I have been deeply engaged in – dating back to my work at the US Treasury in the 1980s for Secretaries Baker and Brady. In the 1970s, Latin oil producers had borrowed heavily in dollars from foreign banks who lent way too much when the dollar was weak, oil prices were high, and bank loans were readily available. Then circumstances changed. Interest rates rose and oil prices fell, triggering the Latin debt crisis.
Populations across the globe are aging at an unprecedented pace, making many countries increasingly reliant on migration to realize their long-term growth potential, according to a new report from the World Bank.
Cities - home to more than half of the world’s population and responsible for about 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions – are at the heart of the climate challenge. A new World Bank report, "Thriving: Making Cities Green, Resilient, and Inclusive in a Changing Climate," investigates the crucial role cities play in both stopping climate change and protecting people from its impacts.
Global commodity prices are expected to decline this year at the fastest clip since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, clouding the growth prospects of almost two-thirds of developing economies that depend on commodity exports, according to the World Bank’s latest Commodity Markets Outlook report.
The World Bank today released its 2023 Logistics Performance Index report, a measure of countries’ ability to move goods across borders with speed and reliability. The seventh edition of Connecting to Compete, the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) report comes after three years of unprecedented supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, when delivery times soared. The LPI, which covers 139 countries, measures the ease of establishing reliable supply chain connections and the structural factors that make it possible, such as the quality of logistics services, tradeand transport-related infrastructure, and border controls.
It's already been a busy week. The Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and IMF have started, and people are convening at a time of crises. We are facing COVID-19, inflation, and the war in Ukraine.
