The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has clarified that Zambia along with a few other African countries is not in the priority bracket for accessing debt relief package from the Fund.
Zambia along with Burundi, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire are some of the African countries that have missed out on the COVID-19 debt relief.
Abebe Selassie, director, African Department at IMF, said Zambia missed out on the initial list of debt relief beneficiaries because it is not classified as most vulnerable and poorest.
Selassie was speaking to journalists during a virtual press conference after the Fund launched its ‘Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Economic Outlook’ report recently.
“First and foremost, is the financing we are providing to countries to be able to pursue the supportive policies and have more resources to spend in health and to provide social protection to populations,” he explained.
“I’m happy to say that in the next six to eight weeks, we will be — for the 32 countries that have already made requests and we are processing those requests — be providing the order of about $11.5 bn for those countries in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Selassie added that: “Over and above this, what we have done is to look for resources that would allow us to provide grants to countries that have debt service payments falling due to the IMF for the remainder of this year. What this will do is create more fiscal space for countries to devote to higher health spending, higher social protection, that needs to be spent.”
Selassie pointed out that the IMF hopes to extend the financing relief should it generate more money in the coming months but right now, it has enough resources to provide the debt relief for this year.
