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.
Debt
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
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.
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.
Finance
News
IMF policies fuel social crisis in Ecuador
In July, rising transport and fuel prices in Ecuador led to strikes and public protests, and an up-rising by thousands of indigenous people who are also concerned about privatisation plans.
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.
Featured briefings
27 September 2023
Financialisation and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa
This briefing explains how the IMF and World Bank have driven the financialisation of MENA states, and the pervasive negative effects this has had on the region’s societies and economies.
19 July 2023
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2023
3 July 2023
Civil Society calls for rethink of World Bank’s ‘evolution roadmap’ as part of wider reforms to highly unequal global financial architecture
Joint civil society briefing paper highlights concerns with the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap, and provides a series of recommendations for a Roadmap that prioritises people, participation and the planet over profit and economic growth.