Bretton Woods institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has allocated to Zimbabwe around US$965 million through its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) program.

“Zimbabwe’s illustrative allocation is about US$965 million (in line with its paid quota share: about 0.1485 percent),” said the IMF in its latest update.

SDRs are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the IMF.

They are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. They represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged.

The latest allocation will come as a boost for the Zimbabwe economy, which has been struggling in recent years.

In 2009, Zimbabwe used its SDR allocation to pay off its IMF debt.

Earlier in March, the G7 announced that it would back the expansion of SDRs – a basket of foreign exchange assets maintained by the IMF and used by member countries to supplement their own reserves – to US$650 billion, in order to assist the global coronavirus recovery.

The same proposal was given another vote of international approval on April 7, when the G20 backed the allocation.

This is the first such expansion since 2009.

The allocation of SDRs is normally based on member countries’ IMF quotas, which themselves are often based on gross domestic product.