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Amid Sri Lanka’s slow recovery from its worst economic crisis in decades, a post styled as a ‘Dinamina’ newspaper article began circulating on social media, claiming the World Bank had ranked the country the world’s second poorest. The claim was politically loaded: some versions blamed the current government, while others used a 2024 date stamp to pin the label on the previous administration. Because it carried the masthead of an established state newspaper and invoked a familiar global institution, it spread quickly and convincingly. The following is our fact-check of that fake post.

Social Media Posts

The post circulated by presenting itself as a recent newspaper clipping from a Dinamina article under the headline “Sri Lanka named second among the poorest countries, says World Bank,” while suggesting that the current government was responsible for the situation. It was shared as follows.

Facebook  |  Archived Link

The same post was also shared in one place dated 8 January 2024 and in another dated 1 May 2025. Facebook  |  Facebook

Another set of posts, pointing to the 2024 date shown in these screenshots, argued that Sri Lanka had been labelled the world’s second poorest country during the previous government’s term.

Accordingly, we set out to verify two things: whether this post had genuinely been published in the Dinamina newspaper, either recently or two years ago, and whether Sri Lanka had at any point been ranked among the world’s poorest countries.

Fact-Check

We found that no mainstream media outlet had reported for 2024, 2025 or 2026 that Sri Lanka had been placed second among the world’s poorest countries, and that neither the World Bank nor any other recognized official international body had announced any such ranking.

Sri Lanka Is Classified as a Lower-Middle-Income Country

The World Bank does not officially rank the world’s countries as 1, 2 or 3 by poverty. Instead, it publishes each country’s poverty figures and economic data separately. It also groups countries into four main categories based on gross national income per capita: low-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income, and high-income economies.

For 2024 and 2025, the World Bank classified Sri Lanka as a lower-middle-income country, above the lowest category of low-income and nowhere does it state that Sri Lanka ranks second in poverty. 

World Bank

How Have Sri Lanka’s Poverty Rates Fared Over the Past Few Years?

Looking at Sri Lanka’s poverty history, the national poverty rate stood at 11.3% in 2019. Because of the economic crisis that struck in 2022, according to the World Bank, the rate climbed to 25% between 2021 and 2022 and rose further to 27.1% in 2023 when the crisis peaked. Yet even at this peak, Sri Lanka remained far below the levels seen in the world’s poorest countries, such as South Sudan (82.3%).

By 2024, as the economy recovered and recorded 5% growth, the poverty rate fell to 24.5%. According to World Bank estimates, it was expected to ease to about 22.7% by 2025 and to around 20% over the medium term. In other words, Sri Lanka’s poverty trend has been downward, not upward.

In terms of GDP per capita, the figure for 2024 was about US$4,500. Under the World Bank’s income classification, this confirms that Sri Lanka belongs to the “lower-middle-income” category. Since per capita income in the world’s poorest countries sits below US$600, by income classification too Sri Lanka is nowhere near that group.

World Population Review Data Also Does Not Place Sri Lanka Among the World’s Poorest

Using the official data published by the World Bank, other private institutions, universities, and websites produce their own rankings. The World Population Review ranking for 2026 lists the five countries with the highest poverty rates, in order, as South Sudan (82.3%), Madagascar (75.2%), Eritrea (69%), the Central African Republic (68.8%) and Mozambique (65%).

It should be noted that the figures used by World Population Review for each country belong to different years, reflecting the most recent year, for which each country last confirmed and supplied official data to the World Bank. Using that data, the organization arranged the countries with the highest poverty rates for 2026.

Similarly, according to a global research body such as SAPA USA, the ten countries with the highest share of their population living in poverty for 2026 were as follows.

Rank	Country	Poverty Rate
01	South Sudan	82.3%
02	Somalia	76.8%
03	Nigeria	70.7%

In none of these rankings is Sri Lanka named among the world’s poorest countries.

On the Human Development Index, Sri Lanka Leads South Asia

Measuring a country’s development requires more than poverty rates. The Human Development Index (HDI), compiled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is another strong, internationally recognized yardstick. It considers a country’s life expectancy, education levels, and income.

According to the 2025 Human Development Report released by the UNDP, Sri Lanka ranked 89th out of 193 countries and held the highest human development value in the entire South Asian region.

Across the education, health and income indicators, Sri Lanka stood ahead of neighbours such as India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. In South Asia, only Sri Lanka and the Maldives fell into the “High Human Development” category. A country with the region’s highest human development level therefore cannot be “the world’s second poorest country.”

A Fake Edit Presented as a Dinamina News Report

Because the circulating post carried the Dinamina name while claiming the World Bank had announced Sri Lanka ranked second among poor countries, we ran a keyword search to check whether Dinamina had actually reported such a story. No such report appeared on Dinamina’s official website or its official social media pages. 

One circulated version was dated 8 January 2024, while the same article in another post was dated 1 May 2025. Had it been a genuine Dinamina article, the same piece could not have carried two different dates. We also noticed the specific pages for 2024 and 2025 dates of Dinamina had not carried such an article either, by looking at the archived version of the newspaper.

On closer inspection, the post contained numerous spelling errors, and the name “Dinamina” itself was misspelled. This raised the suspicion that the post had been created or edited using artificial intelligence.

Edited Using Artificial Intelligence

We then submitted the content to AI-detection tools. These revealed that the post had indeed been edited using artificial intelligence.

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Conclusion

Our fact-check shows that the social media post shared as a Dinamina newspaper article claiming the World Bank had announced Sri Lanka ranked second among the world’s poorest countries is false and created using artificial intelligence. 

In no year, whether in 2022 or before or after, has the World Bank or any other recognized official body named Sri Lanka among the world’s poorest countries. World Bank classifications place the country in the lower-middle-income category, its poverty rate has been falling since the 2023 peak, and the UNDP’s 2025 Human Development Report ranks it highest in South Asia. The claim is therefore baseless fabrication.