WORLD’S POOREST WILL TAKE 10 YEARS TO RECOVER FROM COVID

The poorest people in the world will take more than a decade before they return to their pre-pandemic financial positions, Oxfam has said, Euronews reported early.

On the other hand, the richest recouped their losses due to the coronavirus outbreak within just nine months. The charity has highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has made an already highly unequal world even more so, with the 10 richest billionaires enjoying an increase in wealth that would be enough to pay for a vaccine for everybody.

Billionaires increased their wealth by $3.9 trillion (€3,21 trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020, with the 10 richest collectively seeing an increase of $540 billion (€444 trillion), according to Oxfam.

Global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the OECD have all pointed to the dangers of an increasingly unequal world in the context of COVID-19.

The IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said the impact of the crisis “will be profound... with increased inequality leading to economic and social upheaval: a lost generation in the 2020s whose after-effects will be felt for decades to come.”

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