By Fola James
Over 100 countries including Nigeria have approached the International Monetary Fund, IMF for bailout to cushion the effects of the corona virus pandemic.
The affected countries, the fund said have lost over $100 billion in revenue in the last three months, and are mostly in Africa, including other emerging economies of the G-20.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who disclosed this on Monday, said commodities-dependent countries are mostly affected as a result of sliding export prices, sharp reduction in tourism revenue as well as near-zero financial aids from rich economies.
She explained that the pandemic has become so difficult to handle, adding that it will take some time before the virus can be totally contained.
According to her “The outlook is dire, we expect global economic activity to decline on a scale we have not seen since the Great Depression.
This year 170 countries will see income per capita go down—only months ago we were projecting 160 economies to register positive per capita income growth,”
The global health emergency, she stated has attracted ‘response like no other’ from the IMF’s membership. Governments all over the world have taken unprecedented action to fight the pandemic—to save lives, to protect their societies and economies.
Fiscal measures so far have amounted to about $8 trillion and central banks have undertaken massive (in some cases, unlimited) liquidity injections, adding that the IMF has $1 trillion lending capacity at the service of its 189 member countries.
The fund she further stated, has concentrated on providing financial support for the most vulnerable countries.
At least, $100 billion will be required for such intervention in the short run, she said.
Georgieva said “we have strengthened our arsenal and taken exceptional measures in just these two months, the Fund has doubled its emergency, rapid discussing capacity to meet expected demand of about $100 billion.”
She stated that half of the 103 countries that approached the fund will received the bailout before the end of April, 23 of which have been selected from Africa.
The Executive Board of the Fund has decided to “help 29 of our poorest and most vulnerable members—of which 23 are in Africa—through rapid debt-service relief, and we are working with donors to increase our debt-relief resources by $1.4 billion.”
The IMF boss stated that rich countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, and China, have been so helpful in providing “ immediate relief to our poorest members.”
