Poor African nations should be allowed to borrow more from the International Monetary Fund’s reserves to help mitigate the economic effect of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim. “The Group of 20 (G-20) offered some relief but that’s for public debt and that’s really only for one year; it needs to be extended for one or two years,” he said. The IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) are supplementary foreign-exchange reserve assets held by the lender. A proposed $500bn SDR allocation was blocked in April by the lender’s biggest shareholder, the US. One of the main reasons African nations aren’t getting adequate financial support is due to the “global order” being out of kilter and the increasing lack of consensus on how to tackle the devastating effect of the coronavirus pandemic, Ibrahim said.
SOURCE: BUSINESS DAY LIVE
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