Billionaires thrived while poor suffered amid COVID-19: Report

LONDON: The COVID-19 crisis is aggravating income inequality, with the richest quickly getting richer while it will likely take more than 10 years for the world’s poorest to recover, according to a new report published on Monday by Oxfam International.

At the same time, the recession is over for the world’s richest billionaires who have recouped their losses within nine months since the pandemic began spreading across the globe, the United Kingdom-based charity said.

In a report entitled “The inequality virus”, the group warned that the pandemic is the first time since records began that inequality is rising in virtually every country at the same time.

“The 1,000 richest people on the planet recouped their COVID-19 losses within just nine months, but it could take more than a decade for the world’s poorest to recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic,” the report added.

Oxfam’s report shows how the rigged economic system is enabling a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet.

According to the report, the world’s ten richest men have seen their combined wealth increase by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began, an amount it said was more than enough to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone and to ensure no one is pushed into poverty by the pandemic.

“Women are hardest hit, yet again. Globally, women are overrepresented in the low-paid precarious professions that have been hardest hit by the pandemic. If women were represented at the same rate as men in these sectors, 112 million women would no longer be at high risk of losing their incomes or jobs,” it added.

It also calculated that a temporary tax on excess profits made by the 32 global corporations that have gained the most during the pandemic could have raised $104 billion in 2020, an amount it said was enough to have provided unemployment benefits for all workers and financial support for all children and elderly people.