The World Bank-funded Commission on Growth and Development will hold workshops in New York on 'Growth and Some of its Micro and Macro Foundations' (April 9) and 'The Role of Leadership and Governance in Shaping and Implementing Growth Strategies' (April 10).
Macroeconomic policy
Conditionality
News
Evaluation finds that IMF misleads the public about its role in Africa
A report released by the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF criticises the role of the IMF in managing aid inflows to Sub-Saharan Africa, but fails to address more fundamental questions about the Fund’s role in low-income countries.
Rights
News
Bank mining advice boosts private profits
Two recent reports question the World Bank's involvement in the mining sector.
Land
Commentary
World Bank reconstruction role in Timor-Leste creating problems
Guteriano Nicolau S. Neves of the La'o Hamutuk Institute in Dili argues for a critical appraisal of the World Bank's role in the reconstruction of Timor Leste.
Conditionality
News
IMF wants tax on mosquito nets in Zambia
The IMF provoked public ire in Zambia by asking the government to remove value added tax exemptions on a range of goods, including mosquito nets used to fight malaria.
Conditionality
News
Ortega opts for new PRGF for Nicaragua
Newly elected Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party are presenting two different faces to the IMF.
Conditionality
News
Ecuador, Philippines repay IMF debt
Newly elected Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa, announced in January that he would make early repayments of his country’s $33 million debt to the IMF.
Conditionality
News
Dominican Republic taxes at IMF “gun point”
A controversial tax reform programme in the Dominican Republic was forced onto the country by the IMF, in the words of finance minister Vicente Bengoa, “at gun point”.
Accountability
Analysis
Research, knowledge and the art of “paradigm maintenance”
Robin Broad, professor in the School of International Service at American University, describes six mechanisms by which the World Bank's development economics vice-presidency performs a "paradigm-maintenance" role, privileging individuals whose work "resonates" with the neo-liberal free-market ideology.
Conditionality
News
IMF strategic review: too little, too late?
The managing director's report on the medium-term strategic review released at the spring meetings was short on specific proposals for reform implementation and lacked commitments for improved democratic functioning or strengthened surveillance of large industrial countries.
Featured briefings
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.
16 October 2024
Sustainable development requires sustainable finance: why local currency financing is part of the solution
Multilateral development banks can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending and make local currency financing a central element of their developmental mandate.