Wealthy countries must step up to ease access to vital
vaccines and make financing available to Africa, where the global health crisis
and its economic fallout plunged 32 million people into extreme poverty last
year, the fund said.
"Really, how the international community can help the
region is by improving access to vaccines," Abebe Selassie, the head of
the IMF's Africa Department, told Reuters in an interview ahead of Thursday's
publication of the regional economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa.
The continent has fallen behind much of the rest of the
world in the vaccination race as countries with the financial means to reserve
shots have cornered supplies. Current trends indicate few African countries
will be able to make vaccines widely available before 2023.
Selassie said mechanisms like the World Health
Organization-backed COVAX vaccine facility already exist to channel shots to
countries in need.
"But these need to be matched with financing and
investment to massively scale up the global supply of vaccines as quickly as
possible," he said.
After shrinking by 1.9% last year – its worst contraction on
record – sub-Saharan Africa's regional economy will grow by 3.4% in 2021,
according to the regional outlook. That's well below a forecast for global
growth of 5.5%.
Per capita output is not expected to return to 2019 levels
until 2022.
Africa's rebound will be uneven. South Africa, the region's
most developed economy, will grow by 3.1% following a 7% contraction last year.
Oil producers Angola and Nigeria, meanwhile, will grow by 0.4% and 2.5%
respectively.
In East Africa, Kenya is predicted to record gross domestic
product growth of 7.6% after a contraction of 0.1% last year, while Ethiopia's
growth will slow from 6.1% in 2020 to 2% this year.
Seventeen countries were in debt distress or at high risk of
it last year, the IMF report stated. And employment fell by 8.5%.
Growing needs
At a time when governments have limited fiscal space, their
needs are growing.
For most countries, vaccinating 60% of their population will
require an increase of up to 50% in existing healthcare spending.
The IMF estimated additional external funding needs for the
region for the 2021-2025 period at $425 billion.
Selassie said governments needed to be ready to make bold
reforms to eliminate policy-induced growth constraints.
But there was also a need to recognize that Africa's current
difficult situation was largely due to the exogenous impact of the pandemic, he
said.
"As such the international community needs to support
these countries with limited capacity to be resilient," he said.
A debt service suspension initiative that was extended in
December, along with a new common framework that encourages governments to
defer or negotiate down external debt will help, the fund said.
A new allocation of $650 billion worth of special drawing
rights – the IMF's reserve asset – should provide around $23 billion to African
governments from this summer, helping them boost liquidity and fight the
pandemic.
However, work needs to be done to channel more of that
allocation to low-income countries, Selassie said.
"The lion's share of the allocation is going to
countries that do not necessarily have the need for this additional
liquidity," he said.
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