The African Development Bank board of directors approved €88 million loans to Cameroon to finance COVID-19 crisis response.
The loan to Cameroon’s COVID-19 Crisis Response Budget Support Programme (PABRC) is under the bank’s COVID-19 Rapid Response Facility (CRF) of up to US$10B which is meant to cushion the impact of the pandemic on health and economy of African Countries.
For instance, the pandemic has shown the structural weakness of Cameroon’s health system and economy and mostly the limited human and financial resources allocated to the health sector.
The COVID-19 Crisis Response Budget Support Programme (PABRC) aims at checking the spread of the virus, save lives and control the impact on the socio-economy of the country.
The programme will ensure the reduction of case fatality and improving the recovery rate by supporting the implementation of health response plan of improving testing, ensuring early detection and rapid management of the virus.
“Women play a key role in the fight against the spread of COVID-19 as wives, mothers, caregivers and community resource persons. The social protection and economic resilience actions under this support will particularly target women and the households and businesses headed by them,” Bank Acting Director-General and Country Manager for Cameroon, Solomane Kone said.
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To restore the cash position of enterprises, measures to sustain economic activity and safeguard employment will include value-added tax (VAT) credits. It will also support strategic agricultural value chains including seeds, poultry and cereals as well as supporting small and medium enterprises in the health, agribusiness and education sectors.
This program is in line with the bank’s US$13M special emergency project for Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) member countries and the Democratic Republic of Congo to fight the pandemic approved earlier this month.
The pandemic came in a time when Cameroon’s economy is recovering from the 2014 shock caused by a sharp fall in the world prices of its main export products that is cocoa, oil and timber.
Source: The Exchange
