The World Bank has dropped the use of developing nation tag for India in its specialised reports and instead classifies it as a “lower-middle-income” economy in South Asia. While India will be referred to as a lower-middle-income economy in all of World Bank’s analytical reports, it may be referred to as a developing country only in some of the generic communications.

The decision to stop using the term developing countries has been taken in view of the word having no universal definition, causing countries like Malaysia and Malawi to be come under the same category earlier. Malaysia has a gross domestic product of $338.1 billion, according to the 2014 figures, while Malawi’s stands at a merely $4.258 billion. Now while Malaysia is referred to as upper middle-income economy, Malawi falls in a low-income classification.

As per the classification, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal are low-income economies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka fall under lower-middle-income, Brazil, South Africa and China under upper middle income, Russia and Singapore under high-income-Non-OECD and the US under high income-OECD.