ILO: Developing countries should invest US$1.2 trillion to guarantee basic social protection

The International Labor Organization has said that developing countries should invest approximately US$1.2 trillion on average 3.8 per cent of their GDP.

This is to guarantee at least basic income security and access to essential health care for all in 2020 alone.

In a brief released on Friday September 18, 2020, Shahrashoub Razavi, Director of the ILO’s Social Protection Department said, “Low-income countries must invest approximately US$80 billion, nearly 16 per cent of their GDP, to guarantee at least basic income security and access to essential health care to all,”

“Domestic resources are not nearly enough. Closing the annual financing gap requires international resources based on global solidarity.” Razavi adds.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the social protection financing gap has increased by approximately 30 per cent.

This is the result of the increased need for health-care services and income security for workers who lost their jobs during the lockdown and the reduction of GDP caused by the crisis.

The situation is particularly dire in low-income countries who would need to spend nearly 16 per cent of their GDP to close the gap – around US$80 billion

Regionally, the relative burden of closing the gap is particularly high in Central and Western Asia, Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (between 8 per cent and 9 per cent of their GDP).

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the global community was failing to live up to the social protection legal and policy commitments it had made in the wake of the last global catastrophe – the 2008 financial crisis.