G20 plans to return $ 100 billion of IMF funds to vulnerable countries to tackle the health crisis

The countries of G20 will make available to vulnerable countries $ 100 billion of the total sum of the Special drawing rights (SDR) issued by the IMF to face the health crisis, their leaders agreed this Sunday during a summit in Roma.

This amount is part of the global amount of 650,000 million dollars (562,179 million euros) of SDR issued by the International Monetary Fund to face the crisis caused by the pandemic.

“We welcome recent pledges worth around $ 45 billion (€ 38.9 billion) as a step towards the ambitious $ 100 billion (€ 86.489 million) in voluntary contributions to countries most in need. “said the leaders.

The G20 countries, which until now had not agreed on an amount to be paid to developing countries, are following in the footsteps of the G7, which has already set a goal of 100 billion dollars to redistribute, especially to Africa.

SDRs are distributed according to each country’s quotas in the IMF, so most of it goes to rich countries. In practice, Africa would only benefit from $ 34 billion, so some developed countries proposed part of their own.

The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez, which was invited to the G20 summit, announced that it will allocate 20% of its special drawing rights to IMF funds to fight poverty and to the future on Resilience and Sustainability.

The Spanish president also announced the donation of 20 million more than vaccines against Covid-19, which brings the total to 50 million until the first quarter of 2022, to “guarantee universal and equitable access.”

On Saturday, Canada had already announced that it would allocate 20% of its SDR to vulnerable countries to accompany the post-Covid economic recovery, the same percentage that France plans to make available for Africa.

The UK also made a similar 20% commitment, while Japan promised to contribute $ 4 billion (3.45 billion euros), as did Italy.

The G20 leaders also pointed, in their joint declaration, to another measure to support vulnerable countries: to debate the policy of surcharges of the International Monetary Fund, as claimed by Argentina.