The Bangladeshi government is being pressured by the IMF's Asia and Pacific department officials to implement its recommendations, including raising the VAT rate, despite opposition from local civil society organizations.
East Asia & Pacific
Accountability
Background
Doing business report rankings
This session will bring together experts from labour, development and business organizations to highlight issues and perspectives that need to be part of the review of these influential rankings.
Land
Background
Halting the global land rush: protecting land rights and promoting food security
This event discussed how to invest in agriculture in a responsible way, including research on the scale of the global rush for land, and explored potential solutions to the problem, including the role that the World Bank can and must play.
IFI governance
News
Chinese investment banker takes post as head of IFC
Chinese national Jin-Yong Cai will become the International Finance Corporation's (IFC, the World Bank's private sector arm) executive vice president and chief executive officer, it was announced in August.
Conditionality
News
No strings attached?
Egypt has been in talks to get over $11 billion in foreign aid, of which at least $7.5 billion will be contingent on IMF approval, sparking concerns from activists over policies likely to be imposed by the Fund, just as it has ended its conditionality review.
Accountability
News
World Bank returns to Burma amid criticism
After leaving over suspended debt repayment in the late 1980s, the Bank officially returned to Burma, also known as Myanmar, in early August.
Conditionality
News
IMF steps into debate over monetary policy, independence at Bank of Thailand
The challenge of maintaining growth amid a global slowdown has sparked fierce debates over Thailand's monetary policy.
Accountability
Background
IFI re-engagement in Burma
Minutes of Burma and IFIs meeting, Washington DC, 18 April 2012
Finance
News
IMF pushes for fully convertible yuan
After high-level talks in May, Chinese vice premier Wang Qishan announced US support for the inclusion of the yuan in the currency basket for the IMF's special drawing rights, the international reserve assets issued by the Fund. While this supports Chinese plans to make the yuan an alternative reserve currency alongside the US dollar and the euro, IMF recommendations for China to speed up the move to convertibility and fully open its capital account have attracted domestic criticism.
Environment
Commentary
An easy call: IFC should quit MRL mining project
The IFC should terminate its support to MRL's Philippine mining venture for not following their guidelines, and more than that, for ignoring the Philippine law concerning indigenous peoples.
Accountability
Commentary
Accountability squandered?
Despite a 2011 victory in Cambodia, where a mass eviction in the centre of Phnom Penh was halted and remaining affected families finally gained legal title to the land they had been wrongly denied under a World Bank project, recent arrests have put justice in jeopardy and led to calls for a continued lending freeze by the Bank.
Accountability
Background
Supporting Social Accountability for Better Results
Minutes of World Bank Social accountability plenary, Washington DC, 19 April 2012
