The World Bank is predicting that 53 million Latin Americans this year will have their incomes below the regional poverty line of $5.50 per day, and it could be even worse, according to a Financial Times interview with Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, a Colombian economist and former government official who has been at the World Bank since 2002.

After two decades of work in reducing poverty risk in the region, World Bank forecast points that this 2020 people will plunge back into high levels of poverty, increasing inequality. The IMF also predicted that the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean would shrink by 9.4% this year, a far worse performance than Africa, the Middle East or Asia.

According to Jaramillo, governments in the region may look for improving access to digital broadband services, upgrading health and education via internet technology and developing more dynamic businesses to rebound the Latin America’s economy.