The Asian Development Bank is tripling the amount of quick-disbursing loans available to developing member countries in Asia to US$20 billion to help them battle the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, bank president Masatsugu Asakawa said on Monday.
The development bank is adding US$13.5 billion to the initial US$6.5 billion package that it announced last month because the economic effects of the pandemic are expected to be more severe than previously thought, Asakawa said.
“It is clear that the scope and scale of this crisis require greater efforts,” Asakawa said in an interview.
The increase would allow the Manila-based lender to provide the private sector with US$2 billion, which would support liquidity-starved small and medium-sized enterprises, help companies cope with supply-chain disruptions and rejuvenate trade financing, he said.
To ensure faster delivery of support, Asakawa said that the bank would streamline its processes and make its lending terms “much more flexible.”
Growth in developing Asian economies, already slowing, is set to weaken even more sharply this year due to the pandemic before bouncing back strongly next year, the bank said in its Asian Development Outlook report on April 3.
Its baseline forecast calls for growth this year in developing Asia — a group of 45 economies that includes China and India — to slow to 2.2 percent from a previous forecast of 5.2 percent — the weakest forecast in more than two decades.
The bank expects global GDP to shrink to between 2.3 percent and 4.8 percent, higher than it estimated last month.
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