Rwanda to receive $11m debt relief from IMF

KIGALI - Rwanda is set to receive about $11 million in debt service relief from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an initial period of six months, as part of the organization's effort to help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Rwanda is among 25 developing and poor countries across the world that will receive immediate debt service relief from the IMF to help address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic," Samba Mbaye, IMF resident representative for Rwanda, said on Tuesday.

"COVID-19 has inflicted great damage to the global economy and poorest countries are the most vulnerable to the pandemic, thus needing debt relief to cope with the post economic recovery process," Mbaye told Xinhua in a telephone interview.

The IMF will continue its fundraising efforts and will provide further debt service relief for a period of up to 24 months depending on resource availability, Mbaye added.

The IMF on Monday announced its approval of immediate debt service relief to 25 of its member countries under the organization's revamped Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust to help tackle COVID-19.

Early this month, Rwanda said it, together with the IMF, had trimmed the country's growth forecast for 2020 to 5.1 percent from its earlier projection of 8 percent due to the COVID-19 outbreak.