Poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $5.50 a day at 2011 international prices. As a result of revisions in PPP exchange rates, poverty rates for individual countries cannot be compared with poverty rates reported in earlier editions.

In 2023, India’s real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was around 8.15 percent, the highest in South Asia. In contrast, Nepal reported the lowest real GDP growth rate in the region at approximately 1.95 percent that year, but it was forecasted to increase by 2.5 times to nearly 4.9 percent in 2025.Economy in South Asia In general, South Asia encompasses Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Bhutan. In 2020, India had a GDP of over 2.6 trillion U.S. dollars, while Bangladesh and Sri Lanka followed. The Maldives and Bhutan were among the countries with the lowest GDP in the Asia-Pacific region. In South Asia, the main economic activities include the services sector as well as the industrial and manufacturing sectors.Society in South AsiaFrom the South Asian countries, Bangladesh had the highest share of people living below the poverty line. The Maldives and Sri Lanka exhibited the highest and second-highest GDP per capita among the South Asian countries in 2021.