PARIS, May 18 (Reuters) – African leaders and the heads of multilateral lenders called for a quick decision to re-direct billions of dollars of reserves at the IMF to Africa to help finance African economies hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, a French-led summit concluded on Tuesday.

“We call for the swift decision on and implementation of an unprecedented general allocation of IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) that is expected to amount to $650 billion, of which about $33 billion to increase reserve assets of African countries,” a final communique said.

It also said participants were determined to magnify the impact of IMF SDRs through voluntary on-lending to African nations and said that more COVID-19 vaccines should be made available through dose sharing and through developing of local production capacity. (Reporting by John Irish, editing by dominique Vidalon)

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