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and North Africa saw their wealth increase by 23 percentÌýduring the Covid-19 pandemic, while the bottom 90 percentÌýof the region's population, a new report released today by the UK-basedÌýhumanitarian organisation revealed.

The world's ten richest men saw their fortunes double during the pandemic, while 99 percent of people sawÌýtheir incomes shrink. Over 160 million more people have been forced into poverty due to economic woes during the pandemic.

"Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic,"ÌýOxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher stated. "Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom (...)ÌýThe result is that every kind of inequality imaginable risks rising."

The threeÌýrichest people in the Middle East, which is already the ,Ìýnow own more wealth ($26.3 billion) than the bottom 222.5 million MENA citizens, according to the report.

The non-profit called on world leaders to implement taxes on top fortunes to "get that money back into the real economy", Bucher said.

The report found that an annual wealth tax applied to the wealth of multimillionaires and billionaires in the Arab WorldÌýwouldÌýgenerate $79.3 billion a year, enough to increase public health spending across the region by half.

Billionaires' wealth has risen more over the past two yearsÌýthan in the last 14 years combined.Ìý

According toÌýForbes, the 10 richest people on earth includeÌýElon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault & family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffet.