Bolivia is the first country to have produced an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which has qualified it for the enhanced HIPC Initiative debt relief.
Debt
Conditionality
News
UK ED quizzed on UK role in Bank and Fund
In October UK Executive Director Stephen Pickford was called before the Treasury and International Development Select Committees for questioning by MPs.
Conditionality
News
Southern organisations demand end to adjustment
Organizations and activists in more than 20 Southern countries have launched a campaign against the destructive lending policies of the World Bank.
Finance
News
Jubilee South summit
Jubilee 2000 representatives held a South-South Summit in South Africa in late November.
Conditionality
News
IMF takes on poverty mandate
Important changes to the IMF’s remit in the poorest countries were announced at the IMF-WB Annual Meetings in September.
Finance
News
Ecological debt outweighs financial debt
The view that poor countries owe the rich millions of dollars in loan repayments is challenged by a Christian Aid report.
Conditionality
News
Strikers in Colombia in protest at IMF and debt
In late August Colombian labour unions began an indefinite national strike in protest at the government’s political, social, and economic agenda and calling on the government to declare a moratorium on the payment of its internal and external debt.
Accountability
News
Politics before good policies in Zimbabwe
The IMF has agreed to lend US$7.32 bn to the Zimbabwean government despite continued concerns about corruption in the land reform process; the cost of supporting Zimbabwean troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); a planned privatisation of the Hwange power plant; and the reintroduction of price controls.
Finance
News
Africans to challenge Washington Consensus
African NGOs met in Nairobi in August to discuss and formulate an Africa Consensus on economic and social development to challenge the Washington Consensus.
Conditionality
News
PNG Government avoids conditionality
Relations between the Bank and the government of Papua New Guinea were strained in July by the government’s decision to issue bonds to raise money from the private sector.
Featured briefings
14 December 2020
Gambling with our lives: Global emergencies expose consequences of decades of IMF and World Bank policies
Market-led policy approaches increasingly used to deal with both climate and health emergencies are failing to protect those most vulnerable.
10 December 2020
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2020
12 October 2020