IMF proposes $ 50 billion plan to end pandemic

The IMF on Friday proposed a $ 50 billion plan to end the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of vaccinating at least 40% of the world’s population by the end of 2021.

“Our proposal sets targets, assesses funding needs and establishes pragmatic action,” Kristalina Georgieva, director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said at the World Health Summit held in Rome as part of the of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging countries. .

For a long-term sustainable global economic recovery, the plan aims for at least 60% of the world’s population to be vaccinated by the end of 2022.

The $ 50 billion estimate is a combination of at least $ 35 billion in subsidies, plus government resources and other funds, the IMF said.

The amount seems very modest compared to the massive stimulus packages implemented by rich countries, including the latest in the United States for $ 1.9 trillion approved at the end of March.

It is also “low” given the potential benefits of an early end of the pandemic, which would represent “about 9 trillion dollars” for the world economy by 2025, estimated the IMF economists Gita Gopinath and Ruchir Agarwal on a teleconference with reporters.

“One of the key messages of our proposal is that the amount needed is not very high,” Gopinath stressed, as the expensive investments to develop effective vaccines have already been made.

Gopinath and Agarwal, authors of the plan, stressed that it is now accepted that there will be no “lasting end” to the economic crisis without an end to the health crisis. It is therefore in the interest of every country to put an end to this crisis for good.

– “For the benefit of all” –

“We have long been warning of a dangerous divergence in the economic situation,” Georgieva said. “It will only get worse as the gap widens between rich countries that have access to vaccines and poor countries that do not.

By the end of April, less than 2% of the African population had been vaccinated, while more than 40% of the population in the United States and more than 20% in Europe had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the IMF.

The pandemic, which is hitting India particularly hard, could derail the global economic recovery.

To put the world back on the path to growth, the IMF has made a series of proposals, the first of which is to help developing countries improve their immunization campaigns.

The idea is “to significantly control the pandemic everywhere for the benefit of all,” Georgieva said.

To achieve the vaccination goals of the world population, the IMF insists on the need for additional subsidies to the global mechanism for the distribution of Covax vaccines, through donations of excess doses and guarantees of free cross-border circulation of raw materials and vaccines.

The Covax mechanism, of which the World Health Organization (WHO) is a part, was created in an attempt to prevent wealthy countries from stockpiling most doses of anti-ovid vaccines, but so far it has been ineffective.

The IMF admits that rich countries are called upon to contribute the most to the $ 50 billion plan.

But according to Georgieva, it is also the rich countries that “would probably see the best return on public investment in modern history, capturing 40% of the increases in GDP and about a trillion dollars in additional tax revenues”.

Dt / els / ad / gma