Nairobi, Nov. 5, 2023: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has over the past one month (October) reviewed the economic, financial, social and governance policies of about eight African nations with a view to opening its funding purse to strengthen their weakening forex reserves and offer budgetary support.
Completion of the reviews has resulted in over $1billion in financing commitments for seven of the eight nations pegged on approval by the IMF Executive board.
The funding was: Somali ($100 million), Democratic Republic of Congo ($200.39 million), Rwanda ($262 million), Tanzania ($150 million) Gambia ($10.9 million), Comoros ($4.7 million) and Senegal ($276 million).
And on Friday, the Fund announced it had reached a staff-level agreement with Tanzania on second review of the extended credit facility.
“Upon completion of the Executive Board review, Tanzania will have access to SDR113.37 million ($150 million), bringing the total IMF financial support under the arrangement to SDR342.1 million ($452.7 million),” said Charalambos Tsangarides, who led the IMF team.
In Zimbabwe, the outcome of the IMF staff visit is expected to serve as a key input in the preparations for a Staff Monitored Program (SMP) while in Mozambique the IMF team resolved to continue its discussions in the context of Third Review under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement.
In Somalia, the IMF and the Somali authorities reached an agreement on key economic and financial policy reforms which now qualifies the country to a debt relief and an additional $100 million financing under a three-year Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement.
The financing which is still subject to the fund’s Executive board approval follows the considerable progress that Somalia has made in rebuilding its economy and institutions under the current ECF-supported programme since 2020.
“Somalia has maintained strong implementation of wide-ranging reforms to help strengthen key economic and financial policy institutions,” IMF team leader Laura Jaramillo said in a statement last week.
October 24, the IMF team led by Edward Gemayel, conducted a mission in Dakar between October 12 and 24 to review progress under the authorities’ economic program supported by an Extended Fund Facility (EFF)/ECF arrangement of SDR1.13 billion (about $1.5 billion), combined with the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RS) of SDR242.70 million (about $320 million).
The EFF/ECF and Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) arrangement were approved by the IMF Board on READ MORE
The EastAfrican
