Notes from the CSO townhall meeting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Robert Zoellick
Aid
Finance
News
IDA replenishment starts soon
Although there has not been a large take up of the fast-tracking facility available to IDA countries, it could affect the timetable for IDA replenishment, if it causes IDA funds to run low before the end of the legal period of IDA 15 in 2011.
Finance
News
Flexibility or seeds of new crisis?
A flurry of papers by the IFIs, UNCTAD and NGOs raise concerns over renewed debt difficulties in poor countries just as the IFI's complete a review of the debt sustainability framework to allow more borrowing.
IFI governance
News
Rebranding hides little change for IMF lending
The IMF has launched a rebranding exercise for all of its lending to low-income countries, and while the new facilities will deliver more resources, the money seems destined to come with the usual damaging conditionality attached.
Conditionality
Analysis
The potential development implications of enhancing the IMF's resources
In April 2009, the G20 group of leaders committed $1.1 trillion to combat the financial crisis, with the bulk of this being channelled through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, this substantial amount of resources may never be provided, and if it is, may not have the intended positive effect on developing countries. Experience so far demonstrates that the IMF is still imposing damaging pro-cyclical conditions on some borrowers, and that the finance provided to low-income count
Environment
Analysis
Are we nearly there?
A number of 'pilot' funds are underway to develop climate related interventions in key sectors. Significant UK financing has been dedicated to these funds, primarily through the World Bank. These pilot programmes must be seen as building blocks towards an appropriate post 2012 financial architecture. Based on an emerging UK civil society consensus this paper highlights the form that this architecture should take, what development models it should build upon and what technological approaches it s
Accountability
Analysis
Bretton Woods Project submission on the DFID White Paper
In a submission the the DFID white paper consultation, we set out the significant change needed at the World Bank and IMF to bring them into line both with international norms and with UK policy, in order to improve their contribution to sustainable development. In this submission we outline changes needed in: IFI governance; IFI conditionality policies; IFI policies related to aid effectiveness; IFI policy on climate change; private-sector finance; and the financial sector's impact on devel
Finance
News
Not much on offer for poor countries to counter the crisis
The world's poor are being hard hit by a crisis for which they are not responsible. Low-income countries will face a financing gap of hundreds of billions of dollars this year. More than $2 trillion have been found to boost Northern economies and emerging markets. Yet richer countries have committed just over one twentieth of the additional development finance required to compensate low-income countries for the shock they face resulting from this crisis.
Finance
Analysis
Africa and the making of adjustment
Development economist and professor of African studies Howard Stein examines the evolution of policy in the Bank, focusing on how economists became hegemonic. In this essay he details the origin of structural adjustment, tracing its roots back to a set of neoliberal economists who gained influence at the Bank in the late 1970s.
Accountability
News
Bank plays blocking game in Accra aid negotiations
The influence of the World Bank was felt in Accra when developing countries and donors met at a resplendent conference centre for the recent High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.
