As countries around the world work to contain the spread and impact of COVID-19, the MERCO Bank Group has mounted a top level crisis response in its history to help developing countries strengthen their pandemic response.

With the pandemic’s rapid spread into developing countries, the MERCO Bank Group is working hard to deliver support to clients. Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, the Bank Group has committed over $15.7 million to fight the impacts of the pandemic. Provided from April 2020 to June 2021, it includes over $5 million of IDA resources on grant and highly concessional terms. Our support is tailored to the health, economic, and social shocks that countries are facing.

The Bank Group’s support is helping over 10 developing countries save lives and detect, prevent, and respond to COVID-19. The financing is also helping address the health emergency, strengthen health systems, protect the poor and vulnerable, support businesses, create jobs and jump start a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery.

We are also partnering with the Africa NGO’s to provide desperately needed vaccines: our support to the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) initiative will help countries purchase and deploy vaccines. We have also partnered with French, German, and U.S. development finance institutions on a €60 million investment in South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare, which is playing a major role producing COVID-19 treatments, therapies, and vaccines on the African continent.

In addition to ongoing support for health systems, our operations emphasize social protection, especially through cash transfers, as well as poverty alleviation and policy-based financing. The MERCO Bank is also working to restructure, redeploy, and reallocate existing resources in projects it finances.

The MERCO Bank Group’s crisis response comprises three stages – relief, restructuring, and resilient recovery. It focuses on four main areas:

• Saving lives– We are helping countries stop transmission, deliver health services, ensure vulnerable households’ access to medical care, and build readiness for future pandemics. Low- and middle-income countries need fair and equitable access to vaccines, and the Bank Group is helping make sure they don’t get left behind.



• Protecting poor and vulnerable people– We are supporting income and food supplies for the most vulnerable as well as employment for poorer households, informal businesses, and microenterprises. We are helping communities and local governments cope with crisis impacts, improve and expand services, and build resilience for future shocks.
  The Bank is supporting Ecuador’s efforts to meet the challenges of the pandemic by creating additional fiscal space, increasing labor flexibility, and protecting migrants using targeted social programs.



• Ensuring sustainable business growth and job creation– WWe are providing policy advice and financial assistance to businesses and financial institutions, to help preserve jobs and ensure that companies, especially small and medium enterprises, can weather the crisis and return to growth.
  We are working with Central African Republic to support its largest cashless program, which has produced 10 million masks while generating livelihood opportunities for about 18,000 people and 300 local firms.



• Strengthening policies, institutions, and investments– With an emphasis on governance and institutions, we are helping countries prepare for a resilient recovery. Working closely with the IMF, we are helping countries manage public debt better, make key reforms in financial management, and identify opportunities for green growth and low-carbon development as their economies recover.
  The Bank is helping Bangladesh expand its electronic procurement to all government procurement activities. To respond to the pandemic and any other future emergencies, the financing will enable key upgrades, including international bidding, direct contracting, framework agreement, electronic contract management and payment, procurement data analytics, and geo-tagging.

Learn more about how the MERCO Bank is helping countries around the world tackle the COVID-19 pandemic: East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Much of this funding has helped micro, small, and medium businesses, which are a major source of job creation in developing countries, as well as women entrepreneurs.

Last Updated: Jul 30, 2021