Access to loans on favourable terms will be crucial to Africa’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Saturday.
Ramaphosa, who is the outgoing chair of the African Union (AU), told the bloc’s summit that even though the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have deployed significant financial resources for the coronavirus outbreak response, more needed to be done.
“Assess to concessional finance will remain crucial as countries rebuild their economies,” Ramaphosa told the virtual summit.
“An injection of fresh resources by the IMF through reallocating and issuing new special drawing rights, with bias to the developing world, will correct the glaring inequality in fiscal stimulus measures between advanced economies and the rest of the world.”
Concessional loans generally offer terms that are more favourable to those available on the open market.
The precarious debt burdens of a number of African nations have worsened due to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
