WASHINGTON, June 11, 2021—World Bank Group President David Malpass today issued the following statement in advance of the G7 Leaders’ Summit:
“I warmly welcome the G7’s vital work on helping to accelerate an end to the pandemic and restoring broad-based growth and sustainable development.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank Group has committed over $125 billion to fight the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, the fastest and largest crisis response in our history. This financing is helping more than 100 countries strengthen pandemic preparedness, protect the poor and jobs, and jump-start a climate-friendly recovery.
On vaccines, we welcome the announcements from G7 leaders to provide hundreds of millions of doses to developing countries, and we stand ready to support deployment and help countries access further vaccines. We encourage countries with surplus doses to release those for countries with deployment plans in place.
The World Bank is rapidly scaling up programs for countries to acquire and deliver vaccines and deploy them in peoples’ arms. We have now approved $3 billion in vaccine financing for 32 countries, of which 15 are in Africa. More approvals will follow rapidly over the coming weeks.
The IFC, our private sector arm, is leading a consortium to support Africa’s regional vaccine production. Work toward investments in South Africa, Senegal and Rwanda is at an advanced stage.
The World Bank Group is convening a COVID-19 pandemic task force, with the IMF and other partners, to further increase supply, especially in 2021, and to track, coordinate and advance delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries, as called for by the G7 Finance Ministers & Central Bank Governors communiqué. In this context, the World Bank is maintaining a website that provides detailed information on all of our COVID vaccination programs.”
