The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that about a dozen countries in the Middle East and Central Asia requested financial support from the Fund to face the consequences of the Coronavirus on their economies.
Jihad Azour, director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department - called on governments to do everything available to help their health systems and strengthen their social safety nets despite their already under stress budgets.
He pointed out that central banks should be ready to provide liquidity to banks, especially to support lending to small and medium enterprises, while it is possible to consider the matter of traditional financial measures to support the economy such as spending on infrastructure once the crisis begins to recede.
The Fund said it was working to speed up approval of urgent funding requests from the region and the first batch of those aids would be decided this week.
Azour warned that the crisis would develop into a prolonged economic recession that has lasting losses on welfare in society through increased unemployment and bankruptcy.
Azour noted that the crisis would be so challenging especially for war-torn countries, such as Yemen, Iraq and Sudan.
Earlier, the IMF speculated that the coronavirus crisis would result into a global recession, by striking a bigger blow to the global economy than the financial crisis did a decade ago.
The Fund's Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that an economic recovery should follow next year — as long as world leaders work to get the disease under control.
“The economic impact is and will be severe, but the faster the virus stops, the quicker and stronger the recovery will be,” Georgieva said in a Monday statement after a conference call with finance officials from the G20 countries.
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