BEIRUT — In the World Bank’s latest rankings of economies around the world based on the income level, Lebanon’s status sunk to “lower middle income,” its first drop in these classifications since 1998.
Here’s what we know:
• “For the eleventh consecutive year, Lebanon’s real GDP per capita fell in 2021, and the country also experienced sharp exchange rate depreciation,” the World Bank said in a statement publicizing the release of its new rankings at the beginning of July.
• “Therefore, Lebanon, an upper-middle-income country for almost 25 years, now moves to the lower-middle income group,” the organization added.
• Every year, the World Bank updates its classifications based on countries’ gross national income per capita from the previous calendar year, a statistic that combines an economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) with income accrued from overseas. The World Bank estimates that Lebanon received $6.6 billion in total remittances in 2021, just over half the country’s GDP, which has shrunk since the financial collapse of 2019.
• Lebanon was last ranked as a “lower middle income” country, or one with a GNI per capita between $1,086 and $4,255, in 1998. World Bank data shows Lebanon’s GNI per capita had dropped from a high of $7,640 in 2013 to $5,510 in 2020, with a further plunge to $3,450 last year.