The fallout of the US and Israel’s war with Iran is poised to cost the Asia-Pacific economy hundreds of billions of dollars and plunge millions into poverty, a United Nations report said Tuesday.
Military escalation in the Middle East could cause output losses of between $97 billion and $299 billion in the Asia Pacific, due to rising costs for transportation, electricity and food, according to an estimate from the United Nations Development Programme.
That would equal about 0.3% to 0.8% of regional GDP, the report said. The UNDP also predicted that the war puts 32 million people at risk of falling into poverty globally, 8.8 million of them in the Asia-Pacific region.
After peace…