While the IMF has focussed on its mandate review and governance reform, the institution’s policy towards low-income countries has taken a backseat. Civil society groups are worried that the IMF has returned to promoting fiscal austerity and constraining the investment needed to reach goals on poverty.
Aid
Accountability
News
Gender-blindness and conditionality cast shadow over record World Bank lending
New evidence of worsening gender performance and persistent conditionality has led critics to ask if the Bank is fit for purpose.
Accountability
Analysis
Submission on the World Bank and IFC to DFID's multilateral aid review
As the UK government reviews its funding and relationships with multilateral organisations, we argue that the World Bank Group's poor performance, lack of country ownership and accountability, and tendency to 'mission creep', require a focus on institutional and policy change at the Bank, and no increase in funding.
Finance
News
Pakistan running from the IFIs
The Pakistani government is facing increased pressure from the IMF to meet the requirements of its financial stabilisation programme, agreed in 2008, including the full implementation of a value added tax (VAT) and specific foreign borrowing targets.
Accountability
News
World Bank investment lending reform: pro-poor?
In May, the Heinrich B
Accountability
Analysis
Bottom lines, better lives? Rethinking multilateral financing to the private sector in developing co
This report examines MDBs' growing but controversial investments in the private sector in developing countries. It proposes changes to ensure that these investments work for development, rather than serving the interests of foreign investors.
Land
News
US pledges to controversial World Bank agriculture fund
The US administration is seeking to allocate $1.6 billion to its global agriculture and food security initiative. Of this, $408 million has been earmarked for the global agriculture and food security programme (GAFSP), a new multi-donor trust fund, to be managed by the World Bank.
Conditionality
News
Evaluation: World Bank's PSIA contribution to country capacity 'negligible'
A recent report by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) on poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) finds implementation problems and a "negligible" impact on developing country capacity, echoing long standing civil society critiques.
Finance
Background
World Bank country assistance strategies
The country assistance strategy (CAS) is the most important World Bank country-level document: it sets out the indicative level and type of assistance the World Bank Group will provide to a country, usually for a four-year period. The CAS should link a country's development priorities to selected World Bank Group support. It is also intended to promote coordination with other development partners.
Accountability
News
World Bank and IMF enter debate on sources of climate finance
As experts in the United Nations Advisory Group on Finance (AGF) start to scope innovative sources of climate finance, the IMF issued its own proposal, while questions loom over the governance of climate funds. Meanwhile, the Climate Investment Funds' (CIFs) Partnership Forum exposed the limitations of the Bank's engagement with civil society in developing the funds thus far.
Featured briefings
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
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
Sustainable development requires sustainable finance: why local currency financing is part of the solution
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.