In early 2020, the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) struck countries around the world, presenting enormous challenges to health systems and spurring widespread shutdowns, school and business closures, and job losses. Nearly all countries are facing an unprecedented economic downturn.

The World Bank Group has been at the forefront of the global response. In March, the Board of Executive Directors approved a new fast-track facility to help countries address their immediate health needs and bolster economic recovery. The World Bank deployed the first set of projects under this facility in April, aimed at strengthening health systems, disease surveillance, and public health interventions. To soften the economic blow, IFC and MIGA moved quickly to provide financing and increase access to capital to help companies continue operating and paying their workers.

The Bank Group expects to deploy up to $160 billion over 15 months through June 2021 to support countries’ responses to COVID-19 through a series of new operations, the restructuring of existing ones, the triggering of catastrophe drawdown options, and support for sustainable private sector solutions that promote restructuring and recovery. The pandemic could push about 100 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020. Countries impacted by FCV challenges are particularly vulnerable to the health, social, and economic impacts of the pandemic. Our support in these settings focuses on investing in prevention, remaining engaged in crisis situations, protecting human capital, and supporting the most vulnerable and marginalized groups, including forcibly displaced populations. The poorest and most vulnerable countries also face food insecurity, as supply chain disruptions and export restrictions threaten the food supply. To address this, we urged countries to ensure that food supply chains continued to flow and function safely and helped them monitor the impact of the pandemic on people’s ability to buy food. We advocated for strong social protection programs for the poorest and most vulnerable to ensure that people can afford to eat and access basic food supplies, while helping protect livelihoods.

Our research and knowledge products looked at the widespread impact of the pandemic—including economic updates, a report on declining global remittance flows, and a policy note on the shock to education and children’s futures. But long after the immediate crisis subsides, countries will need support in mitigating its impacts and boosting long-term growth. Our policy recommendations offered countries ways to achieve this, including by improving governance and business environments, countering disruptions in financial markets, investing in education and health for better human capital outcomes, facilitating new investments through greater debt transparency, expanding cash safety nets for the poor, reviewing energy pricing policies, and implementing reforms that allow for capital and labor to adjust quickly to post-pandemic structures.

Engaging with the private sector is critical to the emergency response, and IFC expects to provide $47 billion in financial support through June 2021 as its part of the Bank Group’s response. In its initial package, IFC is providing $8 billion to help companies continue operating and sustain jobs during the crisis. This package will support existing clients in vulnerable industries, including infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture, and services, and provide liquidity to financial institutions so they can provide trade financing to companies that import and export goods and extend credit to help businesses shore up their working capital.

IFC is also preparing the second phase of its response, during which it will support existing and new clients. This includes the Global Health Platform, which aims to increase access to critical health-care supplies, including masks, ventilators, test kits, and, eventually, vaccines. It will provide financing to manufacturers, suppliers of critical raw materials, and service providers to expand capacity for delivering products and services to developing countries. IFC will contribute $2 billion for its own account and mobilize an additional $2 billion from private sector partners. It will also help restructure and recapitalize companies and financial institutions on their path to recovery.

MIGA also launched a $6.5 billion fast-track facility to help private sector investors and lenders tackle the pandemic in low- and middle-income countries. The facility allows for the issuance of guarantees using streamlined and expedited procedures. It offers credit enhancement for governments and their agencies to purchase urgent medical equipment, protective gear, medicines, and services, and to fund economic recovery efforts. It also includes de-risking solutions for commercial banks and financial institutions, as well as support for trade financing for local banks.

By supporting trade financing, both IFC and MIGA are complementing broader Bank Group efforts to ensure that global supply chains are preserved, particularly for the production and distribution of vital medical supplies. We mobilized quickly to help countries access these supplies by reaching out to suppliers on behalf of governments. We also cautioned governments against protectionist measures, which can reduce global supply, lead to higher prices, and prevent developing countries from getting the supplies they need.

The Bank, along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), called for the suspension of bilateral debt payments from IDA countries to ensure that countries have the liquidity needed to grapple with the challenges posed by the outbreak and allow for an assessment of their financing needs. On April 15, leaders of the G20 nations heeded this call and issued a debt relief agreement suspending bilateral debt service payments by poor countries beginning May 1. In remarks to the Development Committee at the virtual Spring Meetings of the Bank Group and IMF, President David Malpass commended this historic achievement: “Debt relief is a powerful, fast-acting measure that can bring real benefits to the people in poor countries.”

In June 2020, the Board of Executive Directors approved an approach paper detailing our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper Saving Lives, Scaling-up Impact, and Getting Back on Track explains how we’re organizing our crisis response across the three stages of relief, restructuring, and resilient recovery. The first involves emergency response to the immediate health, social, and economic impacts of COVID-19. Then, as countries bring the pandemic under control and start reopening their economies, the restructuring stage focuses on strengthening health systems for future crises; restoring people’s lives and livelihoods through education, jobs, and access to health care; and helping firms and financial institutions regain a solid footing. The resilient recovery stage entails helping countries build a more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient future in a world transformed by the pandemic.

We will continue to deliver support with unparalleled scale and speed, while concentrating our efforts for the greatest impact and maintaining our financial capacity for a robust response. Working across all the Bank Group institutions, we will continue seeking the right mix of public and private sector solutions and working with clients and partners to fight the pandemic.

Despite the unprecedented scale of the crisis and the ways we’ve repositioned our support to countries, our long-term mission remains unchanged. We remain committed to our goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. To get there, we will focus our efforts on helping countries work toward a resilient recovery from the pandemic and ultimately build back stronger.