South Africa’s request to borrow US$290 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been given the greenlight by the continental finance facility, APA learnt on Thursday.
South Africa is fighting the continent’s largest coronavirus caseload and the loan is expected to help Pretoria to plug the funding gaps that have come due to the financial demands of the disease.
The loan, the bank’s first ever budget support to the country, fell under the AfDB’s US$10 billion Covid-19 Response Facility and would finance South Africa’s Covid-19 Response Support Programme, the bank said.
South Africa is expected to hold talks with the International Monetary Fund for a similar facility, a move that has raised eyebrows among South Africans who feel an IMF loan would render the country’s sovereignty to outside control.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, however, insists that the country needed extra funds to contain the pandemic, which has killed 5,940 people from 394,948 cases since its outbreak in first week of March this year.
South Africa is ranked as the most prepared African country to deal with a pandemic, according to a Global Health Security (GHS) Index, “yet significant challenges remain in the public health sector, including under-funding and human resource shortages.”
“While the private health sector is better equipped, it remains unaffordable to the majority of South Africans,” the GHS index noted.
NM/jn/APA