IMF Offers $50 Billion Plan That Could Vaccinate Everyone By Mid-2022

The IMF proposal's total cost of around $50 billion would include grants, national government resources, and concessional financing.

About $50 billion may be all it takes to vaccinate all eligible people around the world by the middle of next year, the International Monetary Fund or IMF has said, proposing an investment programme that could have a global economic benefit of around $9 trillion. The detailed research piece prepared by the IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath and colleague Ruchir Agarwal suggests that the goal is to vaccinate 40 per cent of all countries by 2021 and the remaining 60 per cent by the first half of 2022. "Saving lives and livelihoods should need no justification, but a faster end to the pandemic could also inject the equivalent of $9 trillion into the global economy by 2025 due to a faster resumption of economic activity," the agency said. The benefit to developed countries - which would have to fund a great deal of this - would be to the tune of $1 trillion in additional tax revenue apart from 40 per cent of the cumulative $9 trillion in global GDP gains, it said.