Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF), has called on the international community to support the world’s poorest countries.

Ms Georgieva said this should be done by helping to close a funding gap facing the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust ((PRGT), the Fund’s main instrument to support low-income countries with interest-free loans.

She said this at the high-level roundtable discussion on Low-Income Countries’ Challenges and Concessional Financing at the World Bank/IMF 2023 Spring Meetings in Washington, DC.

Ms Georgieva said that low-income countries had been impacted severely by multiple economic shocks in recent years.

She explained that these countries’ per-capita income was expected to rise at the slowest pace since 1990, hindering their aspirations to catch up with richer economies.

“This puts them in danger of further divergence unless we act,” she said.

Ms Georgieva said since the start of the pandemic, the IMF had provided 24 billion dollars in support through the PRGT, alleviating people’s suffering and preventing instability from spreading beyond borders.

However, she said higher international interest rates had raised the cost of borrowing and increased the funding shortfall.

“As an urgent first step, what I call for is to close the subsidy gap by providing pledges of 1.6 billion dollars, and we need 4.7 billion dollars to close the loan resource gap.

“Remember, every one dollar of subsidy mobilises five dollars of zero-interest loans, and that is what countries rely on for us to be able to support them.

“We have to work together to close this gap and I have no doubt that we will be successful,” she said.

The World Bank Group/IMF 2023 Spring Meeting opened on Monday in Washington, DC and will end on April 16.

(NAN)