Government to Provide $53 Million in Support for COVID-19 Response in Latin America and the Caribbean

[Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] The Ministry of Economy and Finance announced on the 18th that it will provide a total of 53 million dollars (approximately 65.2 billion KRW) to support the response to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Latin American region.

First, following the policy to support 400 million dollars in health official development assistance (ODA) and the emergency support requests from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Paraguayan government, the Ministry decided to provide 50 million dollars in concessional loans from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) of the IDB for Paraguay's emergency COVID-19 response program.

The governments of both countries and the IDB aim to share and transfer the excellent cases of 'K-quarantine,' such as establishing a response governance centered on Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and setting up an epidemiological investigation and self-quarantine system based on information and communication technology (ICT), through this support. They also plan to expand cooperation in the health and medical fields in the future.

Until now, cooperation with Paraguay has been maintained mainly through small-scale grant ODA since the first 95 agricultural immigrants entered the local area in 1965. The Ministry of Economy and Finance expects that this large-scale concessional loan support will open a new horizon for cooperation between the two countries after half a century.

In addition, the Ministry approved on the 15th a total of 3 million dollars (4 projects) to support COVID-19 response projects in the Latin American region using the Korean trust fund contributed to the IDB.

A Ministry of Economy and Finance official said, "We plan to continuously discover and promote concessional loan and trust fund projects with multilateral development banks to strengthen international cooperation in COVID-19 response and actively support new market development utilizing K-quarantine."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.