BUJUMBURA, Sept 26: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday it would give $17.9 million in a concessionary loan to boost Burundi’s central bank foreign exchange reserves for imports.

Landlocked Burundi, like other regional economies, has been hard-hit by runaway inflation on the back of high global prices for food and oil. “That money will go to the central bank and will help to face the high cost of imports,” IMF representative Enrico Israel de la Piedra told Reuters in an interview.—Reuters