The World Bank’s latest report on foreign investment and its new trade strategy are part of a worrisome trend that involves the Bank’s growing use of tools other than conditionality, to restrict the space for countries to pursue alternative, country-tailored development strategies.
Trade-finance coherence
Private Sector
Background
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which forms a part of the World Bank Group, promotes foreign direct investment (FDI) in its 175 member countries.
Trade
News
Trade: IMF staff paper, World Bank strategy review
A March staff paper by the IMF outlines that although trade restriction measures have increased in the wake of the financial crisis, they have only had a strong negative impact in the products they targeted, and their aggregate impact is just 0.25 per cent of global trade.
Conditionality
News
Leopard about to change its spots? IFIs debate role of financial sector
The financial crisis has divided perceptions within the IFIs about the role of the financial sector in development. While some parts of the World Bank and IMF highlight the merits of small banks, others continue to push globalised finance.
IFI governance
Background
The IMF and protectionist trade policies: What does the record of the past 15 years tell us?
Seminar on the IEo evluation of IMF trade policy advice in Istanbul, 2 October 2009.
Trade
News
IFC deceptions on Doing Business
Excitement caused by the International Finance Corporation
IFI governance
News
Delivering the insufficient?
Despite spin doctoring that called it a triumph for cracking down on banking bonuses, the G20 finance ministers’ statement in early September produced an accounting for how the G20 met or did not meet existing promises and little new agreement. Once again the UK government excluded critical civil society from the discussions.
Rights
News
The IFC: opportunist expansion?
The financial crisis has resulted in an expanded role for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), but its methods may leave a bitter taste with civil society.
Environment
News
ICSID in crisis
The International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is facing an explosion of cases and increasingly vocal criticism from Latin American countries. Questions remain over whether it helps channel productive investment to developing countries or serves as a tool for multinational corporations to get their way.
IFI governance
News
Evaluation: IMF trade policy advice biased
An evaluation by the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office finds that the IMF's trade policy work between 1996 and 2007 had patchy effectiveness, was "not evenhanded" and has "diminished credibility of IMF independence".
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.