New Delhi: More than 100 countries, including India, face serious obstacles in becoming high-income countries in the next few decades, and New Delhi may take nearly 75 years just to reach one-quarter of US income per capita, a World Bank report said.
It will take China more than 10 years to reach one-quarter of US income per capita and Indonesia nearly 70 years, according to the World Development Report 2024: The Middle Income Trap.
Drawing on lessons of the past 50 years, the report finds that as countries grow wealthier, they usually hit a "trap" at about 10 per cent of annual US GDP per person - the equivalent of USD 8,000 today. That's in the middle of the range of what the World Bank classifies as middle-income countries.
At the end of 2023, 108 countries were classified as middle-income, each with annual GDP per capita in the range of USD 1,136 to USD 13,845. These countries are home to six billion people - 75 per cent of the global population - and two out of every three people living in extreme poverty.
The road ahead has even stiffer challenges than those seen in the past: rapidly ageing populations and burgeoning debt, fierce geopolitical and trade frictions, and the growing difficulty of speeding up economic progress without fouling the environment, it said.