According to a statement released by the AfDB, the bank has secured an exceptional $3 billion in a three-year bond to help mitigate the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on African livelihoods and economies.
Although the pandemic has not spread in Africa with the same intensity as in Europe or Asia, several countries of the continent have reported cases of the Coronavirus and many of them are suffering significant losses due to the current crisis, commercial lockdowns, foreign-exchange reserves that are being depleted and health costs that keep getting higher. In order to combat challenges resulting from COVID-19, African countries needed this support from AfDB.
The “Fight COVID-19 Social Bond”, which is the largest social bond that has even been issued on international capital markets, has bids exceeding $4,6 billion, the paid interest rate is 0,75%.
According to the AfDB’s press release, fight Covid-19 was allocated to central banks and official institutions (53%), bank treasuries (27%) and asset managers (20%). The final bond distribution statistics were as follows: Europe (37%), Americas (36%), Asia (17%) Africa (8%,) and Middle-East (1%).