President Muhammadu Buhari and the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Imran Khan, have spoken on the Global Initiative on Debt Relief canvassed by leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement Contact Group.
Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, in a statement on Thursday, said the two leaders had a phone conversation in the afternoon.
Adesina said during an online summit held on Monday, leaders of the 120-nation organization, the largest after the United Nations, had agreed that a debt relief campaign be launched for developing countries to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented health and socioeconomic challenges facing most of them.
It would be recalled that Buhari had on Monday urged international financial institutions to assist member states in cushioning the negative impact of the pandemic in the spirit of solidarity.
He said the assistance should include extending concessional loans, technical support, lowering of tariff on medical equipment and consumables, sharing of expertise in case management, adopting open trade policies, as well as outright debt cancellation.
Buhari, who said only a collective international approach would mitigate the devastating effect of COVID-19, assured that the Federal Government would intensify efforts to monitor, test and isolate more people, especially at the community level.
He added that national, regional and global strategies would be required to tackle the pandemic, which, he said, had ravaged humanity and caused unprecedented devastation to the well-being of people, their livelihoods, and global economy.
