Sigrid Kaag Minister For Foreign Trade And Development Cooperation, Netherlands; David R. Malpass President, World Bank Group; Per Olsson Fridh State Secretary, Ministry For International Development Cooperation, Sweden; Mohammed Al-Jadaan Minister Of Finance, Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia; Alok Sharma Secretary Of State, Department Of International Development, United Kingdom;Odile Renaud-Basso General Director Of The Treasury, France; Khaled Bin Sulaiman Alkhudairy Vice Chairman And Managing Director, Saudi Fund For Development; Jiayi Zou Vice Minister Of Finance, China. Photo: World Bank / Simone D. McCourtie
Washington DC, US//- World Bank Group President David Malpass announced that the bank has spent over $125 billion to fight the health, economic, and social impacts of the COVID-19 worldwide since the outbreak of the pandemic.
“This is the fastest and largest crisis response in our history. This financing is helping more than 100 countries strengthen pandemic preparedness, protect the poor and jobs, and jump-start a climate-friendly recovery”, according to him.
Mr Malpass made this known in a statement ahead of the 47th G7 Leaders’ Summit which is currently taking place from 11–13 June 2021 in Cornwall in the United Kingdom.
On vaccines, he said that; “we welcome the announcements from G7 leaders to provide hundreds of millions of doses to developing countries, and we stand ready to support deployment and help countries access further vaccines. We encourage countries with surplus doses to release those for countries with deployment plans in place”.
The World Bank is rapidly scaling up programmes for countries to acquire and deliver vaccines and deploy them in peoples’ arms. To this end, the bank has now approved $3 billion in vaccine financing for 32 countries, of which 15 are in Africa, Mr Malpass further disclosed.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), bank’s private sector arm, is leading a consortium to support Africa’s regional vaccine production. Work toward investments in South Africa, Senegal and Rwanda is at an advanced stage, he added.
The World Bank Group is convening a COVID-19 pandemic task force, with the IMF and other partners, to further increase supply, especially in 2021, and to track, coordinate and advance delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, as called for by the G7 Finance Ministers & Central Bank Governors communiqué.
In this context, the World Bank is maintaining a website that provides detailed information on all of its COVID vaccination programs.
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