Negotiations on a $4.8 billion IMF loan to Egypt (see Update 83) remain stalled, although Finance Minsiter, Morsy Hegazy reiterated in January that talks are "still ongoing".
Demonstrations have taken place throughout Malawi prompted by the rising cost of living and the increasingly unpopular leadership of president Joyce Banda who has been closely following a US$156 million three-year programme approved in July, 2012 by the IMF's Extended Credit Facility (ECF).
Jamaica is close to agreeing a new IMF programme despite a recent record of disputes.
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.
After missing the October deadline to approve the governance reforms agreed in 2010, IMF shareholders have also missed the January 2013 deadline to agree changes in the IMF quota formula.
Pakistan must radically change its economic strategy, and raise Rupees 360 billion ($3.67 billion), 1.5 per cent of its GDP, before the Fund will agree to a new programme.
In December the IMF executive board extended the temporary interest waiver on concessional loans to low-income countries (LICs) under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), until December 2014.
Every year the Bretton Woods Project celebrates the best specimens of incomprehensible jargon and ridiculous rhetoric issued by World Bank and IMF staff and financial commentators in the cause of IFI business.
Recommended resources on the World Bank and IMF 2012
The executive board of the IMF met in early February to assess Argentina's progress in addressing the quality of its statistical data on inflation and GDP.
2012 saw continued crisis in Europe, but also a turning point in the leadership selection of the World Bank. The choice of Dr Jim Yong Kim as new president, who brings a background in public health in developing countries, marked the first ever selection of a development practitioner to lead the institution. However, large bureaucracies are slow to change, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found out with its inability to extricate itself from the morass developing in the eurozone.
Former Mexican deputy finance minister Alejandro Werner is to head the IMF's Western Hemisphere department overseeing Latin America.
