“Our revised budget expands cash transfers to vulnerable households and provides a substantial increase in grants to subnational governments to help them respond to the pandemic in the face of declining revenue,” said Dr. Abdirahman Beileh, Minister of Finance. “The supplemental financing will help in plugging our public expenditure gap given the 29% domestic revenue shortfall and 2.5% GDP contraction in 2020.”

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund approved Somalia’s eligibility for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative on March 25, 2020, removing the constraints on economic growth and poverty reduction and providing access to IDA instruments to mitigate the impact of multiple crises in Somalia.

“The budget support will help protect lives and livelihoods and strengthen the capacity of Somali institutions to respond to the triple crisis of COVID-19 pandemic, locust invasion and flooding that threatens to derail Somalia’s reform program and its emergence from fragility,” said Hugh Riddell, World Bank Country Manager for Somalia.