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The World Bank has issued a statement saying that a number of the World Bank Group’s clients in emerging markets have reached out to it as the conflict in West Asia has started to impact commodity prices and logistics. World Bank is working with governments, the private sector, regional partners and other stakeholders to help them through the war crisis in West Asia as Iran and uS-Israel have got entangled in a full fledged war.
The World Bank has said it is closely monitoring global market developments and is in direct contact with the most affected client countries to understand what they are facing on the ground. Shipping route disruptions are increasing costs and supply risks are spreading from energy into fertilisers and other critical agricultural inputs. Crude oil prices increased by nearly 40 percent between February and March, the price of liquefied natural gas shipments to Asia rose by almost two-thirds and the prices of nitrogen-based fertilisers increased by nearly 50 percent in March.
The World Bank Group is moving quickly to help client countries to navigate this crisis.
The statements said, "We are ready to respond at scale - combining immediate financial relief with policy expertise and private sector support for the recovery of jobs and growth. We will draw on the full range of instruments we have available to support governments, firms and households. Our aim is to deliver immediate relief by leveraging our active portfolio, our crisis response toolkit; and pre-arranged financing facilities. We will transition progressively to fast-disbursing instruments anchored in sound policies to underpin recovery. Through our private sector arms, we will provide firms with essential liquidity, trade finance and working capital."
The organisation says that clearly, this is an evolving situation and it cannot predict the full range of impacts. As everyone has said, the longer this lasts and the more damage there is to critical infrastructure, the more challenging this will be for our clients. The organisation stressed that it is determined to be helpful and do all it can to safeguard some of the hard-won economic progress that these countries are making.
