Malawi may not be poorest of the poor in 2015 ranking –World Bank

The World Bank has explained its recent ranking of world’s 10 poorest countries where Malawi topped the list says the bank is yet to release the 2015 ranking.

The World Bank’s Communications Officers in Malawi, Zeria Banda, says the recently published ranking is inaccurate as it is a mixture of the World Bank’s 2013 figures with comparative information which the bank has no knowledge of.

“What is ours in the ranking are the GDP figures but those were for 2013. The ranking is not ours. If it was us we would have explained in the ranking what happened to reach those figures,” Banda stated.

Banda said people who produced the ranking only had access to those 2013 numbers “and that’s why they decided to use them.”

“In fact we didn’t release the comparative report as what has been published. We released the GDP numbers and that’s information for 2013 and this is 2015. And right now we are working on 2014 numbers,” she emphasized.

In his popular Muckraking column published on Sunday, columnist Raphael Tenthani pointed out that “Poorest of the poor” is one ‘Badge of Dishonour’ Malawi would rather not have.