Emerging markets are in turmoil. The IMF must step in to help. Here’s how

EMERGING MARKETSIMFThe EconomistThe Economist Today are battling a financial crisis as well as a public-health emergency. Since late January foreign investors, desperate to shed risk, have been withdrawing their cash from poor countries. At the same time falling global trade, depressed commodities prices and vanishing tourists have put export revenues, and hence the supply of foreign currency, into free fall. This has left many countries struggling to pay for imports and to service their dollar-denominated debts, let alone fund emergency health or economic programmes. Over 90 countries have approached the , the lender of last resort for governments, to ask for help.