High oil prices may reduce growth for major importers, says World Bank official

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Persistent high oil prices driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine could reduce the growth rate of major oil-importing developing economies such as China, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey by about a full percentage point, Indermit Gill, Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions at the World Bank, said in a blog post on March 8.

The war will lead to further setbacks to the growth of emerging markets that are already lagging in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to struggling with a range of uncertainties ranging from debt to inflation.

"The war has aggravated those uncertainties in ways that will reverberate across the world, harming the most vulnerable people in the most fragile places," Gill said.

"It's too soon to tell the degree to which the conflict will alter the global economic outlook,” he added.

Prior to the outbreak of the war, South Africa was expected to grow by 2% annually in 2022 and 2023, Turkey by 2-3%, and China and Indonesia by 5% each.