Canada will donate 20% of its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to developing countries to face the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Finance Minister Chrystia announced on Saturday in Rome. Freeland.
“Prime Minister (Justin Trudeau) today announced that we will donate 20% of Canada’s SDRs to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Fund” created by the IMF to help developing countries revive their economies , said the minister during a press briefing on the sidelines of the G20.
The G20 finance ministers approved at their last meeting in Washington in mid-October the IMF initiative to increase aid to the most vulnerable countries, in the form of a new issue of special drawing rights (SDR) in the amount of $ 650 billion.
However, these SDRs are distributed according to the quotas of each country in the IMF: the largest goes to the richest countries. On paper, Africa would only benefit from $ 34 billion.
The G7 countries have promised to return 100 billion euros in SDRs to developing countries, but G20 finance ministers have still not specified how much will be redistributed to them.
France is committed to “redirecting 20% of the money it receives from the IMF to the African continent,” President Emmanuel Macron announced in September.
“If all the great powers do like France, then we will achieve” the objective of donating 100 billion dollars to Africa, he added.
Watch video