Question of the day: why did the World Bank know about the coronavirus pandemic earlier than WHO?

Financiers were the first to sound the alarm - the World Bank published a program of assistance before the official announcement of the pandemic. What is the reason?

It takes a lot of money to fight the virus that has spread around the world. The Kramola YouTube channel has calculated that the World Health Organization does not have the resources to help everyone. The WHO budget is formed by contributions from member countries and in 2020-2021 amounts to just under 1 billion. In addition, the organization receives voluntary donations. This year, donors have contributed $ 5 billion to the organization's budget. And guess who is the main donor? Of course, Gates, or rather the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundation, which contributed most of this money.

The specific measures are not funded by WHO, but by the countries themselves. Good when it comes to rich countries. For example, the US Treasury allocated $ 2.2 trillion to combat the pandemic and mitigate the social and economic consequences. And that's not it. The Federal Reserve has also issued trillions of dollars in direct loans to firms. To save the US economy will be spent $ 6 trillion, or 30% of the country's GDP. Americans find it easy - they have a dollar printing press. The Fed printed additional money and gave it to the Treasury. But what about poor countries that do not have such a machine? They are forced to apply to international financial organizations for loans. What do the IMF and the World Bank have to do with medicine, youtubers ask? And they themselves answer - direct.

The International Monetary Fund has allocated about $ 100 billion to overcome the consequences of the pandemic. The money was received by 81 countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America. The post-Soviet republics also did not stand aside. The IMF gave Ukraine a credit line of $ 5 billion, Uzbekistan received $ 375 billion. The main condition of the loan is that countries can use these funds only to eliminate the consequences of the pandemic. Belarus also applied for $ 900 million, but did not receive a loan. Little is known about the reasons for the refusal, although it is obvious that the money was not given because of Lukashenko and his fraudulent elections.

Together with the IMF, the World Bank was one of the first to support weak countries. How did an organization that has no idea about medicine, or epidemics, or vaccinations manage to draw up a detailed program already in early March? Indeed, in order to take into account all the nuances, we need specialists who are not in the bank by definition. At the first stage, the bank allocated 160 billion dollars. The bank's clients - 100 countries - received their first money in April. They are home to 70% of the world's population. The 39 countries that received loans are located in sub-Saharan Africa. These are the poorest countries in the world. In every third country there is a war, or the situation is unstable: this is Afghanistan, Haiti, Niger, Chad. In October, the number of WB projects reached 111.

$ 160 billion is a gigantic sum for the World Bank. In 2018, the bank announced that $ 100 billion will be spent on all loans and borrowings annually until 2030. This means that the World Bank devotes all its resources to the fight against the pandemic. Only for the purchase and distribution of the vaccine will be spent 12 billion dollars.

But how did it happen that the 60-page "Strategic Anti-COVID-19 Program" was adopted on April 2. The doc says:

“On March 3, 2020, the Board of Directors asked the leadership of the World Bank to take urgent measures to support participating countries in the fight against covid-19. The Council decided to create a $ 12 billion emergency aid fund for IDA (International Development Association) and IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) member countries".

WHO declared covid a pandemic only on March 11. The World Bank already on the third of March spoke in its documents about a "global pandemic". It takes months to prepare the World Bank's plan, since bankers do not have their own specialists in the field of medicine, epidemiology, and vaccinations. The global banking structure is inert and clumsy, and third-party developers must receive terms of reference and baseline data no later than 2019. But in 2019, there was simply no such data. The channel's authors hint that international organizations were preparing for the "show" in advance. Although it is possible that the bankers understood the impending danger earlier than the doctors. Banks are conservative structures, they always come from the worst. Thus, the forecast of the Russian Central Bank for the Russian economy this year is the most pessimistic, in contrast to the forecast of the government or the Accounts Chamber.

The completion date of the World Bank program is also questionable. While the whole world assumes that full recovery will begin no later than 2022, the WB is making a program until 2025. The program says:

“The completion date of the program is March 2025. The same report says that after spending said $ 160 billion by mid-2021, $ 330-350 billion will be provided by June 2023 to help countries shorten the economic recovery timeline”.

It doesn't even smell like a conspiracy here. The poorer the country, the slower the rate of vaccination will be, the longer and more painful the economy will recover. As the channel's authors correctly noted, there is no dollar printing press in Niger. Therefore, the gap between poor and rich countries will widen even more, regardless of whether until 2022, 2025, or some other year, the IMF and the World Bank will help the poor. Of course, they receive loans, but in conditions when even developed economies have multiplied their national debt, poor countries have no choice but to ask for money from the World Bank.