The World Bank has revised its estimate of the economic size of the world’s poorest countries and says Burkina Faso is now the poorest.
The World Bank says the gross domestic product per capita for the world’s poorest countries (at current prices) is just $1,042 per person per year. Burkina Faso, which is in West Africa, ranks number 93 in that list.
Burkina Faso’s economy is about $8 billion. But the World Bank’s estimate of the size of the poorest country is based on purchasing power parity (PPP) – the amount that you could buy with that amount of money.
PPP is a measure of a country’s economy that adjusts for different prices in different countries. It’s the measure used by the World Bank.
The World Bank says it made the change because of a dispute between the United Nations and the World Bank over the proper way to calculate PPP.
The United Nations says that the way to calculate PPP is to use a basket of goods and services that includes things like housing, water, electricity, and so on.
But the World Bank says the UN’s basket doesn’t accurately reflect the price of goods and services in Burkina Faso, and so it changed its calculations.