Ninety Percent Of Ukrainian Population Could Face Poverty If The War Enters Next Year – United Nations

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90% of Ukrainians could face poverty and extreme economic vulnerability if the war drags on over the next year, the United Nations has said.

According to a statement by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) on Wednesday, March 16, a protracted war could wipe out the decades of economic gain Ukraine has had since the break up of the Soviet Union.

Achim Steiner, the UNDP Administrator, said that his agency was working with the Ukrainian government to avoid a worst-case scenario of the economy collapsing.

The agency said it aims to provide cash transfers to families to buy food to survive and keep them from fleeing while propping up basic services.

“If the conflict is a protracted one, if it were to continue, we are going to see poverty rates escalate very significantly,” Steiner told Reuters.

“The end of the scenario is an implosion of the economy as a whole. And that could ultimately lead to up to 90% of people either being below the poverty line or being at high risk of (poverty),” he said in a video interview from New York.

The poverty line is generally defined as the purchasing power of $5.50 to $13 per person per day, he added in a video interview from New York. Before Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24, an estimated 2% of Ukrainians lived below the $5.50 line, he said.

“Cash transfers programs, particularly in a country such as Ukraine where the financial system and architecture is still functional, where ATMs are available, a critical way in which to reach people quickly, is with cash transfers or a temporary basic income,” he said.

The logistical challenges were significant but “not insurmountable”, he said.

“Some of the recent announcements by World Bank and International Monetary Fund in terms of credit lines and funding that is being made available will assist Ukrainian authorities to be able to deploy such a program,” he said.

The UNDP report said that an emergency cash transfer operation, costing about $250 million per month, would cover partial income losses for 2.6 million people expected to fall into poverty. A more ambitious temporary basic income program to provide $5.50 per day per person would cost $430 million a month.

The UNDP’s report comes after Ukraine’s economic adviser Oleg Ustenko said last Thursday that invading Russian military forces have so far destroyed at least $100 billion worth of infrastructure and that 50% of Ukrainian businesses had shut down completely.

“We estimate that up to 18 years of development gains of Ukraine could be simply be wiped out in a matter of 12 to 18 months,” Steiner added