In mid-September the IMF concluded a consultation on its 2015 guidelines on the IMF staff engagement with civil society organisations (CSOs). The resulting document will be an update of the 2003 guidelines and “is intended to be updated as and when needed to reflect gained experience and evolving engagement and communications practices with external stakeholders.” The new guidelines will be discussed in the CSO policy forum at the 2015 IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Lima.

Submitting to the consultation, Carolin Vollmann of the International Trade Union Confederation wrote: “Unfortunately the guidelines fall short of the hoped improvements and remain … what they were before – window dressing with no intention to increase the IMF’s accountability”. Vollmann criticised the online-only consultation process as “halfhearted to say the least … excluding already most of the citizens in IMF client countries.”