Reuters reports that a senior German finance ministry official said that Germany expects world financial leaders this week to back a $650 billion new allocation of the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to help countries cope with the pandemic and its economic fallout.

With the new U.S. administration backing the move, there is now broad agreement among IMF members to bolster the Fund's emergency reserves and a deal this week will pave the way for the fresh money being available from August, the official said.

The new allocation will benefit countries struggling most from the pandemic as roughly 42% of the new funds will go to the world's poorest countries, the official added.