Tag: IMF

African Development Bank approves US$20 million loan to support Seychelle’s Covid-19 recovery

Frank

SEYCHELLES – The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group has approved a US$20 million flexible loan to finance Seychelles’ Governance and Economic Reforms Support Program. This fund is expected to help drive the island nation’s macroeconomic stability and recovery from Covid-19 in the medium-term. The pandemic has severely impacted Seychelles’ macroeconomic performance. Real GDP growth, which averaged 4.2% in 2016-2019, contracted by 12.9% in 2020. The overall fiscal deficit of between -1.4% and 0.7% of GDP in the 2016-2019 period widened to -19.5% in 2020, while public…

Read More

‘War room’ task force convenes to discuss ways on how to help fight COIVD-19 pandemic in developing states

Frank

GENEVA – Heads of the World Bank Group (WBG), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Health organization (WHO) and World Trade organization (WTO) had their first joint task force meeting to discuss and deliberate on COVID-19 Vaccines, Therapeutics and Diagnostics for Developing Countries. The task force dubbed ‘war room’ comes at a crucial time when several developing countries are struggling with new variants and a resurging wave of infections as the dire need of access to vaccines is becoming critical to help curb the pandemic. Out of the issues discussed, accelerating…

Read More

East African nations muster funds to combat the pandemic and restore economic stability

Frank

AFRICA – The COVID-19 pandemic is primarily a health crisis and a human tragedy, but it also has far-reaching economic ramifications. As of now, more than 182 million cases of COVID-19 had been recorded worldwide, with nearly 4 million deaths. The number of cases, and deaths, has been growing exponentially. Compared to other regions, the number of recorded cases in Africa is still relatively small, totaling about 5.4 million cases across 47 African countries. Even though the rate of transmission in Africa to date appears to be slower than that…

Read More