Loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Mali and Ethiopia to combat the coronavirus pandemic has been approved by the IMF.
The Washington-based crisis lender came forward with its global financing efforts in recent weeks to assist countries weather the coronavirus crisis. The IMF board granted $411 million to Ethiopia on the Horn of Africa to assist mitigating the effects of the pandemic on its fast-growing economy.
The cashes will come from the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), it will allow nations to avoid the lengthy negotiations usually needed to secure a full economic assistance program — time most countries haven’t got as they struggle surviving the coronavirus crisis.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant adverse impact on the economy and created urgent fiscal and balance of payments needs,” IMF Deputy Managing Director Tao Zhang said in a statement.
The RFI money, along with $12 million in debt relief under a separate program, will help Ethiopia “address balance of payments pressures and create fiscal space for essential pandemic-related expenditures,” Tao said.
A nurse wears a mask as a protection against COVID-19 Coronavirus as she measure the temperature of a man in Gao on March 26, 2020. Mali has officially declared its first COVID-10 Coronavirus cases this week
On the opposite side of the continent, Mali will get $200 million to help plug the shortage made by government spending to blunt the impact of coronavirus.
IMF Deputy Managing Director Mitsuhiro Furusawa alerted the attempts to contain the pandemic were having “a large adverse impact on Mali’s economic growth and public health.”
“The authorities are taking measures to limit fiscal pressures through reprioritization of spending plans, but large additional financing will be needed to preserve macroeconomic stability and development gains,” he said in a statement.
The West African country’s disbursement was made under the Rapid Credit Facility, which is aimed toward the world’s most poverty-striken nations and has been doubled in size to quickly dispense aid.
The fund “will support the authorities’ response to the crisis, but additional support from the international donor community will be needed to mitigate its social and economic effects.”
Among the world’s most poverty-striken countries, Mali has fought with insecurity made by jihadists and ethnic conflicts for years, with violence within the middle and north occurring on a near-daily basis.
Large swaths of Mali remain outside of the government’s control, and experts worry the country is particularly in danger of the coronavirus.
