While tax policy and reform is an election battleground in developed countries, the IMF has increasingly turned it into a secret technocratic exercise in developing countries. This briefing examines the IMF's involvement in providing advice on tax policy, particularly its recommendations for the imposition of value added taxes (VATs).
Capacity building
IFI governance
News
Training for nothing?
An evaluation of the World Bank’s training for capacity building reveals serious flaws in design and implementation that undermine country ownership; the same criticism is being levelled at the IMF over its plans to charge for technical assistance.
Accountability
Background
BWI-UK / UKAN workshop on World Bank strategic review
Highlights of a 13 February 2008 UK NGO workshop discussing elements of the World Bank's long-term strategic review.
IFI governance
Background
The IFIs and Islamic finance
The World Bank Group and the IMF have become more involved in assistance to and oversight of Islamic financial institutions.
Finance
News
More Bank 'aid for trade'
Heads of the IFIs were in Geneva in November for a WTO conference to take stock of its aid for trade taskforce.
Accountability
Background
The World Bank and financial sector reform
Financial sector reform constitutes a major area of work for the World Bank.
Accountability
Analysis
Consolidating ideology in law?
The World Bank has vastly increased the resources it commits to good governance, with a large portion of that going to a complex and under-researched area: legal and judicial reform. Researcher Victoria Harris explores how the Bank uses such reforms to cement in place its preferred market-based development paradigm.
Accountability
News
Third researchers’ conference on the World Bank
The 2007 Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) will take place 17-18 May in Bled, Slovenia. The third researchers' conference on the World Bank will be held in parallel.
Knowledge
News
Bank staffer slams funding for technical assistance
Buried in the text of the 2006 Global Monitoring Report, a Bank-Fund document to examine progress towards the MDGs, it suggests that technical cooperation funding not be tied to the countries giving the money.
Accountability
Background
Dialogue on the Doha trade round
Dialogue on the Doha trade round at the World Bank-IMF spring meetings in Washington, 20 April 2006.
Featured briefings
1 October 2024
Year one of World Bank Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector: ‘green conditionality’ dwarfs green investments
New BWP research finds the Word Bank's approach to Paris alignment is being used to a significant extent to impose ‘green conditionalities' on borrowing countries, especially in the Global South.
3 July 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2024
3 July 2024
Is the World Bank rolling back commitments to citizen engagement, again?
Understanding the Bank’s chequered history with public, community and civil society participation is key for understanding what is at stake and what to do next.