International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Rights

News

Ministers Support Protesters

Leaders attending the G77 meeting of developing countries in Cuba in April, also lent their support to the protests in Washington against the IMF and World Bank.

14 June 2000

Conditionality

News

Sri Lankan appeal on aid transparency

Sri Lankan NGOs wrote to their President in May urging him to open up the annual Aid Group meeting at the end of May.

14 June 2000

Rights

News

Anti-IMF And Bank Protest Tear-Gassed

In Malawi in May, a peaceful official demonstration, led by the Congress of Trades Unions, against IMF and World Bank reform policies and calling for the government to consider peoples’ needs before conceding to donors’ demands was broken-up by police with tear gas.

14 June 2000

Conditionality

News

IMF demands Cote d’Ivoire austerity

The IMF has told the transition government in Cote d’Ivoire that it should cut government spending after finding that spending was more than double the level agreed by the former president, who was overthrown in December 1999.

14 June 2000

Finance

News

Brown’s Committee Is “Political Whitewash”

Bank and Fund staff have complained that the Joint IMF-World Bank Implementation Committee (JIC), which has been established to coordinate work on the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) program is just “political whitewash”.

14 June 2000

Conditionality

News

New briefing papers

A new short briefing from the Bretton Woods Project, The A, B,C of the PRSP, drawing on discussions with IMF and Bank staff reveals the reality behind the rhetoric of the new IMF and World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.

14 June 2000

Environment

News

Imf Saps Hurt The Environment

A new report by Friends of the Earth-US, The IMF: Selling the Environment Short, highlights how the IMF’s growth-led development model and its approach to stabilisation are unsustainable and fail to consider the implications of ecological limits.

14 June 2000

Finance

News

Drowning By Numbers - Executive Summary

While the cost of using bilateral contributions to finance multilateral debt reduction is relatively high, this would not be the case if genuinely additional resources could be generated

14 June 2000

Conditionality

News

Imf Suspends Lending To Moldova

The IMF has suspended lending to Moldova because the parliament has refused to allow the state-run wine and tobacco industries to be privatized.

14 June 2000

IFI governance

News

Stiglitz “Appalled” At IMF Policy

Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist, took the opportunity of the extensive media interest in the planned protests against the Bank and IMF at their Spring Meetings to launch an attack on IMF policy advice and practices.

14 June 2000

IFI governance

News

Blair appeal on global institutions

At the Davos Economic Summit in January UK Prime Minister Tony Blair called for serious debate about reforming global institutions.

15 April 2000

Rights

News

Jakarta activists call for local initiatives

NGO activists in Jakarta wrote an open letter to World Bank President James Wolfensohn in February, asking him to meet directly with the people to hear their own solutions to reverse Indonesia’s economic decline based on small-scale, local initiatives.

15 April 2000