Tentative schedule of the World Bank-IMF spring meetings in Washington DC, from 19th to 21st April 2013.
The G20's agenda on the international financial architecture looks to tackle sovereign defaults, but not 'currency wars'.
Large middle-income countries jointly initiated alternatives to the World Bank and IMF in March, but advocates are not satisfied with either set of institutions. While challenge to the IMF has been welcomed, civil society actors fear that a new development bank would serve "vested interests" and could lead to "exploitation".
While the IMF-supported banking sector restructuring in Cyprus includes a strict set of restrictions on capital movements, the World Bank and IMF are failing to embrace a more pragmatic approach to capital account regulation.
World Bank president Jim Yong Kim's new overarching strategy on ending absolute poverty and creating shared prosperity elicits criticism for ineffectively tackling inequality and sustainability.
The second external evaluation of the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), discussed by the IMF board end March, evaluated how well the IEO has met its institutional mandate since 2006.
French police searched the Paris apartment of IMF managing director Christine Lagarde in late March as part of an investigation over the way Lagarde, as French minister of finance, handled the compensation settlement of French millionaire Bernard Tapie.
The economic crisis in Cyprus erupted during the second cycle of the European recession of 2011 as a result of harsh austerity policies imposed since 2010 in Europe. It is a new crisis born of a failed response to the original European crisis.
This page outlines the structure of the UK government's interaction with the World Bank and the IMF. It provides contact information for the appropriate staff at the Department for International Development and HM Treasury who deal with the Bretton Woods institutions
The IMF's Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) published a late December evaluation that was critical of IMF concerns and advice relating to international reserves, especially the accumulation by countries of large quantities of US dollar assets.
Controversy erupted in January after the IMF implied lenders to Greece may need to provide yet more debt relief, while the social and economic sustainability of other Troika (the lending triumvirate comprising the Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission) programmes is still in question.
An IMF December staff discussion note from the IMF's research department, authorised by chief economist Olivier Blanchard, reveals that shadow banking now accounts for 25 per cent of global financial assets.
New BWP briefing finds the World Bank counted 70 per cent of energy-sector reforms in Development Policy Financing as having 'climate co-benefits' between 2018-2023 - but most of these promoted a private-led energy transition.
