“This is a crisis like no other,” said Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, in a conversation on global economic prospects and the COVID-19 response and recovery with Center for Global Development (CGD) President Masood Ahmed held on Friday Oct. 30, in Washington, DC.
“This is a crisis like no other. And therefore, the response has to be like no other. That translates into uniform acceptance that this is going to be a long ascent, uncertain, uneven, prone to setbacks. In other words, the recovery is not going to be, across the world, as rapid as the drop of output has been,” said Georgieva
Georgieva shed a light on the IMF’s swift response in helping low-income countries weather the pandemic.
“The IMF has provided financial lifelines to 81 countries. Small number of those countries are strong fundamentals where we just increase their buffers. Majority are countries that are faced with difficulties. Forty-eight of these countries are low income countries. I can genuinely say, you know it very well never in the history of the fund we have done so much so quickly for low income countries. On average, 10 times more than we would lend in a year. Now, that was and remains critically important to stabilize countries against the shock,” said Georgieva.
She also emphasized that the IMF is very keen on taking proactive steps with developing countries that want to come out on the other side of this crisis with stronger fundamentals.
“I'm on the view that this crisis has told us straight we are interdependent and in fact, it gives us a chance to build this multilateralism on common interest and our institution has a very important role to play. The simplest way to make the case is by being effective, which means that you would see us very engaged with these countries on good policies and good governance,” said Georgieva.
She concluded her statement by asking decision makers to use this crisis as an opportunity to recover form the past and build a green, digitally enabled economy because the future is now.
“The recovery is once in a lifetime opportunity as we deploy massive stimulus to support a transformation in the economy. In other words, don't recover what we had before this crisis. Do better: green economy, one that is digitally enabled everywhere, and a fairer economy,” said Georgieva
To watch the full conversation, click here