The 2024 World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings, taking place in the context of the institutions’ 80th anniversary, offered little substantive reform despite multiple ongoing organisational processes and reviews.
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)
Finance
Analysis
IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund's toolbox
IMF board's lukewarm endorsement of SDR rechanneling through MDBs stands in stark contrast to continued calls from Global South governments for additional SDR allocations, amid growing debt crisis.
IFI governance
Background
The future of Special Drawing Rights as a development finance tool: What's next?
Notes from the Civil Society Policy Forum session on 17 April 2024, titled "The Future of Special Drawing Rights as a Development Finance Tool: What's Next?"
Finance
News
The rise of bilateral currency swaps - a threat to the IMF?
Without reforming SDRs to boost reserves and stabilise economies, bilateral swaps will further reinforce the existing asymmetries of the international financial system.
Finance
News
The 2021 SDR allocation was beneficial for the global economy, but was it sufficient to address the scale of the crisis?
IMF’s new report looking at the impact of the $650 billion SDR allocation in 2021 talks about the benefits of the allocation for the global economy but fails to address the scale of the polycrisis.
Finance
Analysis
Reconceptualising Special Drawing Rights as a tool for development finance
Briefing examines the shortcomings of the current SDRs allocation system and calls to reform SDRs to ensure their targeted, needs-based and equitable distribution.
Finance
News
African finance ministers join growing calls for more equitable SDR allocations
New calls for SDR reform reveal acute need of financing for low- and middle-income countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Finance
Background
What are Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)?
This Inside the Institutions looks at the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, including their history and usage, with a focus on the latest allocation, which accounts for 69 per cent of the SDRs ever disbursed.
Rights
News
A new SDR allocation: Combatting deepening fragility concerns
The links between high debt burdens, lack of climate finance, austerity and the rise in political instability and fragility, conflict and violence remain largely neglected as IMF shareholders consider calls for a new SDR allocation, as proposed by the Bridgetown Agenda.
IFI governance
Background
The IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust: Can an IMF-managed SDRs trust deliver inclusive & sustainable recoveries?
Notes from the 11 April Civil Society Policy Forum - The IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust: Can an IMF-managed SDRs trust deliver inclusive & sustainable recoveries?
Featured briefings
12 December 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2024
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.