The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have expressed their readiness to provide assistance to member countries facing immediate financing needs arising from public health disasters, the global financial institutions said in a joint press statement yesterday.
Both institutions said they would utilise every means possible including emergency financing, policy advice, and technical assistance and in particular, rapid financing facilities that, collectively, can help countries respond to a wide range of needs.
“We are engaged actively with international institutions and country authorities, with special attention to poor countries where health systems are the weakest and people are most vulnerable,” the institutions said, calling for countries to strengthen health surveillance and response to the virus outbreak.
In particular, the IMF said it stands ready to deploy the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) which is an emergency financial assistance to member countries without the need to have a full-fledged programme in place. A similar measure helped Ecuador cope with one of its worst earthquake in 2016.
Other measures include Augmenting existing lending programmes, grants for debt relief and new financing arrangement, the fund said.
The Coronavirus outbreak has been described by the OECD as greatest danger to global since the financial crisis and is expected to cut growth from 2.9 percent to 1.5 percent if the crisis persists.
Representatives of the world’s seven most industrialised countries (G7) will meet to decide on an effective response to the threat posed by the COVID-19 outbreak to global economy.
So far, death toll around the world has risen to 3,127 in over 75 countries that have recorded around 92,109 cases of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
While the numbers of deaths are increasing in countries like the United States and Iran with Senegal as second Sub-Saharan country with a case, Nigeria has not noted any new case or death so far following efforts by the government towards curtail spread of the disease.
