The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have called on developed nations to aid the world’s poorest countries as they struggle with the virus pandemic and its economic wake.
More than 75 countries have asked the agencies for help since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The IMF has pledged $40 billion in aid; the World Bank $35 billion.
Many emerging nations have incurred crushing debts but have not invested adequately in their health care infrastructures, the agencies point out.
Those debts are even harder to service now: most must be repaid in dollars, which are in short supply because the world’s investors are hoarding dollars during the economic panic.
Many of the countries also rely heavily on revenues from exporting raw materials such as metals and oil, the demand for which has collapsed; and from tourism, which has disappeared.
The World Bank and IMF singled out 76 countries that make up a quarter of the world’s population and two-thirds of people living in extreme poverty. The lending agencies asked that creditors suspend debt repayments immediately if any of these countries ask.
It is “imperative to provide a global sense of relief for developing countries as well as a strong signal to financial markets,” the two agencies said in a joint statement.
TREND FORECAST: No amount of cheap money will boost failing economies that will be pushed deep into depression as a result of government shutdowns of business. Again, totally absent in the mainstream media coverage is the fact that many nations were in, or sinking into, recession prior to coronavirus headline news.
Moreover, as we have continually detailed, even among the establishment media and their pundits, there was broad recognition that lowering of interest rates and more monetary money-pumping schemes, such as quantitative easing, would not boost sagging economies… before the virus hysteria.
