International Monetary Fund (IMF)

IFI governance

Background

Taxing the super-rich, a step closer

Notes from a Civil Society Policy Forum SPF on 22 October 22 titled "Taxing the super-rich, a step closer".

22 October 2024 | Minutes
World Bank President Ajay Banga, speaks at an event titled Transforming Challenge into Action: Expanding Health Coverage for All, at the WBG & IMF Spring Meetings, 18 April 2024, Washington DC. Credit: Grant Ellis / World Bank

IFI governance

Analysis

Annual Meetings 2024 Preamble: BWIs’ management and key shareholders stand in the way of transformative governance reforms despite ‘evolution’ rhetoric

Unconvincing World Bank Evolution Roadmap reforms and IMF’s struggle to mainstream climate and gender symptomatic of wider malaise.

17 October 2024

Conditionality

Analysis

Kenya's growing youth movement for fiscal justice rejects IMF-mandated austerity

Youth-led led protests lead to withdrawal of controversial finance bill by President William Ruto.

16 October 2024 | Guest analysis
President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during the opening of the Joint Session of the G20 Sherpa and Finance Trails, at the Itamaraty Palace. Brasília - DF.

Finance

Analysis

The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20

At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.

16 October 2024 | At Issue

Finance

Background

What is the World Bank & IMF debt sustainability framework for low-income countries?

This Inside the Institutions examines the joint World Bank and IMF Debt Sustainability Framework (DSF) for low-income countries (LICs) and evaluates its impact on LICs’ ability to maintain fiscal space for development and climate goals.

16 October 2024 | Inside the institutions

Finance

News

Project 2025 takes on the World Bank and IMF – harbinger of an uncertain new era of geopolitics?

US conservative blueprint for second Trump term calls for US to withdraw from World Bank and IMF, amid continued geopolitical tensions and unresolved debt crisis in Global South.

16 October 2024

IFI governance

News

CSOs call for mandatory and meaningful consultation at the IMF

Civil society organisations call for consultation on the design of policies that significantly impact states and citizens.

16 October 2024

Finance

News

IMF surcharges review: tinkering at the margins as crises deepen?

IMF’s surcharges review is resorting to incremental changes by reviewing the level and time base of penalty charges, instead of achieving meaningful reform

16 October 2024

Gender

News

2024 Gender IFI Summer School

Gender IFI Summer School, brings together regional and global organisations working to advance economic justice issues, particularly from a feminist perspective, to discuss the IFIs’ impact on women’s rights and wellbeing, as well as strategies and tactics to push back.

12 September 2024 | Events

IFI governance

News

The Bretton Woods Institutions at 80: Where do we go from here?

As the World Bank and IMF celebrate their 80th anniversary in 2024, on 10th July the Bretton Woods Project, together with the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, were joined by a distinguished group of panellists to critically analyse the opportunities for, and challenges to, reforms of the BWIs and the international financial architecture more broadly.

10 July 2024 | Events
cover illustration of the Observer Summer 2024

Finance

Analysis

IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund's toolbox

IMF board's lukewarm endorsement of SDR rechanneling through MDBs stands in stark contrast to continued calls from Global South governments for additional SDR allocations, amid growing debt crisis.

3 July 2024

Conditionality

Commentary

Economics is political: the IMF’s programme in Egypt can’t succeed without reforming both

More debt without tackling the political sources of Egypt’s economic problems means a deepening of the crisis.

3 July 2024 | Guest comment