World Bank faces increased competition over large scale infrastructure in Asia, with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS Bank.
Global architecture
Finance
Analysis
BRICS Bank: New bottle, how’s the wine?
Last year BRICS' leaders agreed to launch a BRICS development bank. Whether this is considered positive depends in part what questions are being asked. Sameer Dossani of ActionAid International highlights the flaws in the World Bank and IMF, analyses whether a BRICS Bank could be different from these institutions and proposes what it should do and what it should look like.
Private Sector
Analysis
ICSID and Latin America
Latin American states are actively exploring alternative mechanisms to the ICSID state-investor dispute mechanism which they claim has investor bias.
Finance
Analysis
The IMF’s debt restructuring dilemma
Burgeoning debt levels, and problems in Jordan and Philippines, indicate that debt crises are not behind us. While the IMF considers policy changes, an influential group of scholars has proposed a new Fund facility for handling sovereign debt restructuring.
IFI governance
Analysis
Annual meetings 2013: communiqués coverage
Detailed analysis of the communiqués from the 2013 World Bank and IMF annual meetings.
Social services
Analysis
The Doing Business review: a test of World Bank leadership
By this year's October annual meetings, we will know what the World Bank board has decided on what happens next to that institution's controversial and most popular publication, the Doing Business report.
IFI governance
Analysis
BRICS without mortar
On the sidelines of this week's G20 summit, BRICS nations are expected to reveal details of how their proposed $100 billion alternative to the IMF will operate.
Finance
News
Financial sector risks remain
A May IMF staff discussion note evaluated international efforts to address gaps in regulation of "a relatively small number of large, complex financial institutions" which remain "very difficult to regulate, supervise and resolve".
Finance
News
Turkey pays off IMF debt
Turkey discharged its debt to the IMF in May, by paying a final installment of $421 million after decades of loans and stand-by arrangements.
Finance
News
IFIs on capital: flowing in same direction
The IMF's long-awaited guidance note on capital flows fails to remedy the faults of the 'institutional view' on capital account. The World Bank's long-term thinking is also emphasises liberalisation.
Featured briefings
12 October 2020
World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings 2020
6 October 2020
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2020
6 October 2020
Repairing harm caused: What could a reparations approach mean for the IMF and World Bank?
It is time for the IMF and World Bank to understand their own responsibility and decolonise their approach.