Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what discussions she has had with the IMF on supporting developing countries experiencing the economic effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

The department is working closely with HM Treasury to ensure that the IMF continues to play its critical role at the centre of the global financial safety net, including supporting the poorest and most vulnerable countries to respond to the economic costs of the COVID19 pandemic.

The UK has been pressing for improvements to the IMF’s existing toolkit, such as increasing the access limits on the IMF’s emergency financing instruments, which was agreed by the IMF Board on 7 April. The details of this can be found here: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2020/04/09/Enhancing-the-Emergency-Financing-Toolkit-Responding-To-The-COVID-19-Pandemic-49320?cid=em-COM-123-41385

DFID is providing up to £150 million as the UK contribution to the IMF Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, to support the poorest developing countries with debt relief to support public finances during this crisis. The IMF recently announced the first tranche of support through this Trust will be disbursed to 25 countries. We will continue to engage with the IMF to ensure that it can effectively support vulnerable countries during this unprecedented global health and economic crisis, and has adequate resources to meet the needs of developing countries. The Chancellor has announced an additional GBP 2.2 billion of UK loan resources for the IMF Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which provides concessional lending to developing countries.