The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol warned that emerging and developing countries are among the hardest hit by rising energy prices.
“It is not the U.S. who will suffer the most (from) the high energy prices,”
Birol told CNBC on Tuesday
Birol said oil-importing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would suffer the most from higher import prices and their weaker currencies.
Past May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its economic growth forecasts for oil-importing countries on the assumption that higher energy prices would exacerbate economic challenges in those countries.
The IMF said, “Higher commodity prices add to the challenges of rising inflation and debt, consolidating global financial conditions, uneven progress on vaccination, and underlying vulnerabilities and conflict in some countries.”