BY Oluseyi Awojulugbe
The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet on Tuesday, April 28, to debate on Nigeria’s request for financial aid.
The country has submitted a request for $3.4 billion under the fund’s rapid financing instrument.
The IMF’s rapid financing instrument is a short-term facility that typically bears interest.
During the just-concluded spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank Group, Kristalina Georgieva, IMF managing director, had said aid requests from sub-Saharan African countries would be prioritised during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Sub-Saharan Africa ought to be the centre of our attention and it is. We now have more than 30 countries applying for emergency financing. We are prioritising and rapidly responding to this request recognising how critical this lifeline is for them,” she said.
The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted global supply chains with ripple effects in various sectors.
According to Georgieva, 102 countries have requested for aid from the IMF and funds have been disbursed to 15 countries “in a record short time”.
The IMF has assured members that it is ready to deploy its full $1 trillion lending capacity to help countries through the wave of instability caused by the pandemic.
The pandemic is said to have wiped out at least 30% of global oil demand which led to a supply glut and a dip in crude oil prices.
As a result, Nigeria has had to revise the 2020 budget and is now awaiting a response from the IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank (AfDB) from which it has requested $6.9 billion.
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