The Intern-ational Monetary Fund will likely make available $35 billion in loans to oil-importing countries in the Middle East and North Africa where popular uprisings have occurred, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Saturday. Despite upheaval across the region, no countries have asked for help from the IMF, which is seen as having backed the policies of many of the authoritarian leaders who have been displaced or are under pressure.
"Of course, not all countries will ask for a program, but this is a rather big amount of money which may help bridge the situation until those countries will come back to a more sustainable path," Strauss-Kahn said at a media conference.
Responding to political unrest that has swept the region, finance ministers from the United States, Europe and other leading economies agreed on Thursday they would back aid to Arab nations that would support good governance and broad-based economic growth.
They stopped short, however, of pledging stepped-up monetary aid.
Political change continues across the Middle East and North Africa, where decades of high unemployment and economic inequality have boiled over. Popular protests forced out the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia, and the leaders of Syria and Yemen are grappling with challenges from their own citizens taking to the streets.
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