Brazilian activist Marcos Arruda exposes the problems with his government’s economic policies and the role of the IMF in a new book.
Debt
Finance
News
IMF “Lending Into Arrears” In Ecuador
The new IMF policy of “lending into arrears”, that is lending to countries in financial crisis with debts owing to the private sector, has been applied to Ecuador.
Finance
News
Brown’s Committee Is “Political Whitewash”
Bank and Fund staff have complained that the Joint IMF-World Bank Implementation Committee (JIC), which has been established to coordinate work on the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) program is just “political whitewash”.
Finance
News
Bank Report Counters Globalization Critics
In April the World Bank launched a new briefing Assessing Globalization, examining the implications of international trade for poverty, inequality and the environment.
Finance
News
Millennium Lottery
A new report from Christian Aid, Millennium Lottery, Who Lives, Who Dies in an Age of Third World Debt, looks at how debt and structural adjustment hinders development through the lens of health in Africa.
Finance
News
Countries embark on PRSP process
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.
Finance
News
Ecuador crisis leads to indigenous peoples’ uprising
In January, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and other social movements led an uprising in protest at the worsening economic situation which resulted in the resignation of the president, Jamil Mahuad.
Rights
News
Jakarta activists call for local initiatives
NGO activists in Jakarta wrote an open letter to World Bank President James Wolfensohn in February, asking him to meet directly with the people to hear their own solutions to reverse Indonesia’s economic decline based on small-scale, local initiatives.
Finance
News
Mozambican NGO rejects Bank emergency lending
The Mozambican Debt Group (MDG) has protested against the one-year moratorium on Mozambican debt service payments granted by the World Bank in response to the devastation caused by the worst floods experienced by the country, and against the Bank providing loans to support emergency efforts.
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.
Featured briefings
6 April 2023
World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings 2023
5 April 2023
The IMF at the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The need for governance reform
As the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time the IMF’s shareholders use the opportunities provided by the anniversary and growing calls for reforms to the international financial architecture to redesign the IMF’s governance structures and programmes to ensure they are consistent with the commitments outlined in 1948 and with international human rights law.
5 April 2023
The global financial architecture and the international debt crisis: An urgent call for reform
Influence of unreformed international financial institutions and creditor interests in debt solutions in low- and middle-income countries plagued by delay and ineffective when undertaken.