By Asmau Ahmad
The World Bank will provide 50 countries with finance to buy COVID-19 vaccines by mid-2021.
The bank president, Mr David Malpass, made this known in Washington D. C. during a news conference at the ongoing 2021 Spring Meetings which began on Monday.
He said that for the first time in the bank’s history, it topped $100 billion in commitments over a 12-month period.
Mr Malpass added that there had been a big surge in growth in the group’s activities in response to COVID-19.
On addressing debt issues for developing countries, he said the group was working actively in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the common framework that the G20 established for dealing with debt overhang and debt burdens.
“The G20 has, I think, in the deliberations this week, a call for the first creditor committee to be formed under the common framework. And the question is aimed at the middle-income countries, many of them face access problems to market- based finance and they also have rising fiscal deficits that are problematic.
“So, I think, again, I am going to fall back that transparency is very important. I think also we need to look for a more balanced relationship between creditors and debtors.”
Malpass said the challenge facing middle-income countries was collateralised debt, which made it very hard to restructure. We are making some progress on debt transparency, though collateralisation of debt remains a problem and non-disclosure clause by some creditors remains a problem.
“There’s full recognition of the debt problem facing the poor countries. I welcome that. I mentioned International Development Association (IDA) 20 earlier.”
Speaking about the effect of climate change on the recovery process of developing countries, the president said many of the poorer countries were dramatically affected by climate change but were not major producers of greenhouse gas emissions.
He said four per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions came from the poorest countries.
He, however, said that one way they could benefit was if the rest of the world was doing more as it would reduce their vulnerabilities and also provide resources for them to adapt to the change. “Second is the direct job aspect of adapting to changing climates and also providing food security within regions.
“Those are going to be big and important from a job creation standpoint. “The populations are growing of young people and so we are looking for ways to have private sector climates that are inviting to new businesses and that allow job creation.
“Also, as countries being prepared for the recovery and allowing their economies to change to the post-COVID environment, which is going to be very different from pre-COVID.”
Malpass also said that the bank had plans to reduce global poverty, for development and a focus, country-by-country, to see the developing world do better in 2022. He said that would mean having a better response to climate change that was underway, better education and health care systems.
He added that the bank’s commitments grew a record amount both in percent terms and dollar terms in 2020.
The president said that in 2020 calendar year, the bank was up 65 per cent from 2019 in terms of International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and IDA commitments.
He added that it was continuing to expand the commitment capacity of the bank and that IDA 20, the acceleration of the next replenishment cycle of IDA would help with that.
