Presidential Candidate for the Change Guyana political party, Robert Badal, has branded government’s approach to the World Bank for a US$5 million loan to tackle the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) currently ravaging the world, a “shame.”
“I know of no other country that has had to take a loan to fund the [COVID-19] outbreak response. What a shame,” he said in a statement yesterday.
However, several countries have approached various multilateral financing institutions for funds to tackle COVID-19 and its impacts. Reuters reported on Friday that Uganda will ask the World Bank for a loan of US$190 million to help cushion its economy from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It will also approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for additional funding. Papua New Guinea has requested a total of US$252 million from the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Ghana has also approached the World Bank and IMF for funding and the ADB and the World Bank have agreed to provide loans to Pakistan on flexible terms to deal with the outbreak. Several other countries have made similar requests for loans to tackle COVID-19.
The World Bank has announced a financing package worth up to US$12 billion, aimed at supporting countries in their response to the novel coronavirus outbreak. The funding will be used “to respond to country requests for crisis financing of their immediate needs and also to lessen the tragic impacts of the virus,” World Bank President David Malpass told reporters earlier this month. Other international financing institutions have announced similar initiatives.
In his statement, Badal said that government’s optimism in securing a US$5 million from the World Bank to fund the fight against COVID-19 “confirms what a shameful state our economy has been reduced to under their leadership.”
He charged that it is a reflection of the level of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption at the hands of successive administrations entrenched by ethnic voting. “While we give away our resources to others and discriminate against local businesses who pay heavy taxes we have to take loans to cover basic public health activities, even after increasing the budget from $21B to $36B over the last year,” he said.
Badal said that this is in stark contrast to the trillions of dollars in support that first world countries are extending towards containing the coronavirus outbreak from their own resources, not from loans.
“As I said during the election campaign, ethnic voting supports corruption and incompetence, erodes democracy and keeps us on a path of poverty. Where is the good life that was promised? Our voting behaviour makes us the architect of our own underdevelopment, our own deprivations and our own poverty,” Badal declared.
