WASH­ING­TON, Unit­ed States–The World Bank says the Caribbean and oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries face a se­ries of tough chal­lenges in 2015, in­clud­ing the loom­ing prospect of high­er bor­row­ing costs, as they adapt to a new era of low prices for oil and oth­er key com­modi­ties.

On Wednes­day, the Wash­ing­ton-based fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the lat­est Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Prospects (GEP) re­port said this re­sults in a "fourth con­sec­u­tive year of dis­ap­point­ing eco­nom­ic growth."

The re­port said growth in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean "will ease to 0.4 per cent in 2015, as South Amer­i­ca strug­gles with do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, in­clud­ing wide­spread droughts, weak in­vestor con­fi­dence and low com­mod­i­ty prices."

It adds that de­vel­op­ing coun­tries on a whole are now pro­ject­ed to grow by 4.4 per cent this year, with a like­ly rise to 5.2 per cent in 2016, and 5.4 per cent in 2017.

"De­vel­op­ing coun­tries were an en­gine of glob­al growth fol­low­ing the fi­nan­cial cri­sis, but now they face a more dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment," said World Bank Group Pres­i­dent Jim Yong Kim.

"We'll do all we can to help low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries be­come more re­silient so that they can man­age this tran­si­tion as se­cure­ly as pos­si­ble," he added. "We be­lieve that coun­tries that in­vest in peo­ple's ed­u­ca­tion and health, im­prove the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, and cre­ate jobs through up­grades in in­fra­struc­ture will emerge much stronger in the years ahead.

With an ex­pect­ed liftoff in US in­ter­est rates, the re­port says bor­row­ing will be­come more ex­pen­sive for emerg­ing and de­vel­op­ing economies over the com­ing months.

It says this process is ex­pect­ed to un­fold rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly since the US eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery is con­tin­u­ing and in­ter­est rates re­main low in oth­er ma­jor glob­al economies. (CMC)