Ebola Subsides, Economic Impact Lingers

Ebola epidemic recedes, leaving deep economic scars

Falling commodity prices hindering recovery

Infrastructure investment needed to help increase growth

The ministers from Liberia, Central African Republic, and Madagascar told a news conference during the IMF-World Bank Spring meetings in Washington that the slow global economy is making recovery more difficult.

Abdalla Kadre Assane, of the Central African Republic, said after almost three years of massive insecurity, the country lacks the resources required to stabilize its institutions ahead of general elections scheduled for August. And Gervais Rokotoarimanana said Madagascar will be asking the IMF for funds under the Extended Credit Facility to help the country recover from the effects of a political crisis that ended in January 2014.

But the overriding issue was Ebola. “The disease ravaged our economy beyond imagination”, said Amara Konneh, Liberia’s finance minister.

Konneh said Liberia had survived the crisis, and the authorities hoped to declare the country Ebola-free by May 15, but added the devastation left by the disease is overwhelming.

“Our health care system collapsed, we need to rebuild for resilience. We need to get the kids back in school; we have more orphans, widows and widowers today than we ever had. So we’re redirecting spending and making hard decisions—but the demand is too high, and our resources too little.”

Depleted resources

Konneh said the Ebola crisis has isolated Liberia from the rest of the world. The pandemic has limited imports, exports, and travel to the point where the government had to increase spending on goods and services “so the country would not collapse.”

“It scared everybody away from us. So we’ve had to take some fiscal and monetary measures to maintain macro-economic stability.”

Meanwhile, growth projections for the three countries most affected by the Ebola epidemic have been significantly marked down, and...