LONDON (Reuters) – The international community needs to do more to tackle the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
“We are going to continue to push to do even more,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said during an online FT Africa summit.
“I would beg for also more grants for African countries. The World Bank has grant giving capacity. Perhaps you can do even more… and bilateral donors can do more in that regard.”
She added the Fund was pushing to shift more of its existing Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to countries that needed support most, and was “very committed” to finding “a way forward” for countries like Zambia now needing to restructure their debts.
She seemed reluctant, however, to use gold reserves, and suggested that a larger allocation of SDR was not on the cards for now.
(Reporting by Marc Jones and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Tom Arnold)
