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".
A January IMF working paper has accused the US of "fiscal profligacy".
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recommended resources on the World Bank and IMF 2012
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.
The Troika has announced another Greek debt agreement, but disputes between the Fund and its Troika partners over debt reduction remain unresolved.
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.
