Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday exhorted multilateral financial institutions to step up funding to low and middle-income countries to bolster their preparedness to deal with any pandemic in the future. Such nations, the minister stressed, have inadequate resources to ward off large-scale health emergencies and, therefore, require greater global assistance.
Sharing her views on garnering funds for global public goods at a G-20 event, Sitharaman said: “Increased funding would be needed from multilateral development banks. Resilient and Sustainability Trust (RST) being created by the IMF must keep pandemic preparedness in mind.” “It’s apparent now…that investment should happen now for a safer future.” She was participating in a virtual panel discussion at the G20 meeting being held at Bali in Indonesia.
The objective of the proposed $50 billion-worth RST is to extend long-term financing to support countries to deal with structural challenges.
For its part, India alone had allocated as much as $29 billion to boost health infrastructure and to ensure health insurance for the poor and the low-income groups.
While highlighting that a committee appointed by the G20 has done commendable work in firming up a road map to gather resources, the minister said any gap can be filled with other means, including through official development assistance.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has to expand its capacity and mobilise global resources, and structural bottlenecks would have to be removed to soften the pandemic impact, the minister said.
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