Millions of people in South Asia are being pushed into extreme poverty as the region where a quarter of humanity lives suffers its worst-ever recession due to the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Bank said on Thursday. The multi-lateral lender forecast a record economic contraction of 7.7% for South Asia this year, and said workers in the informal sector were being hit hardest, and private consumption was unlikely to recover quickly from the blow. “The impact on livelihoods will even be larger than the GDP forecast suggests…This implies that the region will experience a sharp increase in the poverty rate,” the bank said in its bi-annual report.
