The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stands ready to mobilize its $1 trillion lending capacity to help its member countries to cope with the COVID 19 pandemic, Managing Director IMF, Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday.
As a first line of defense, the Fund can deploy its flexible and rapid-disbursing emergency response toolkit to help countries with urgent balance-of-payment needs, she wrote in a blog.
These instruments could provide in the order of $50 billion to emerging and developing economies. Up to $10 billion could be made available to our low-income members through our concessional financing facilities, which carry zero interest rates.
The Fund already has 40 ongoing arrangements—both disbursing and precautionary—with combined commitments of about $200 billion. In many cases, these arrangements can provide another vehicle for the rapid disbursement of crisis financing. We also have received interest from about 20 countries and will be following up with them in the coming days.In addition, the Fund’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) can help the poorest countries with immediate debt relief, which will free up vital resources for health spending, containment, and mitigation. In this regard, I commend United Kingdom’s recent pledge of $195 million, which means the CCRT now has about $400 million available for potential debt relief. Our aim, with the help of other donors, is to boost it to $1 billion. In this way, the IMF can serve its 189 member countries and demonstrate the value of international cooperation.
“Because, in the end, our answers to this crisis will not come from one method, one region, or one country in isolation,” she said.
Only through sharing, coordination, and cooperation will we be able to stabilize the global economy and return it to full health.
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