Multilateral Medicine
Published in Project Syndicate
By Robert Muggah
This year’s annual IMF/World Bank spring meetings may be taking place virtually, but the challenges facing the world’s finance ministers and central-bank governors are frighteningly real. In particular, will multilateral efforts succeed in preventing the coronavirus from causing a humanitarian and economic catastrophe in Africa and other vulnerable regions?
In this Big Picture, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Lawrence H. Summers, a former US Secretary of the Treasury, call for an aggressive increase in international lending to developing countries, expanded use of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights, and a two-year debt-payment moratorium for every emerging and developing economy that needs help.
