14 June 2000
The World Bank is planning to establish “the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development”.
In April the World Bank launched a new briefing Assessing Globalization, examining the implications of international trade for poverty, inequality and the environment.
Executive directors have agreed to set up an independent evaluation unit for the IMF.
Developing countries’ exports, particularly agriculture and textiles, should have comprehensive and predictable duty-and quota-free access to rich countries markets if they are to benefit from outward-oriented reforms, concluded the Development Committee.
The World Bank is planning to establish “the premier web entry point for information about poverty and sustainable development”.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) should scrap its long-term lending programmes to poor countries because it lacks competence on issues such as reducing poverty, according to a new report, The Future Role of the IMF in Development: An ODC Task Force Report, by the Overseas Development Council (ODC).
In March, finance ministers from the South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) postponed plans to create an Asian Monetary Fund after pressure from the IMF and the US government.
In April, thousands of protesters gathered in Washington DC to close down the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings.
Leaders attending the G77 meeting of developing countries in Cuba in April, also lent their support to the protests in Washington against the IMF and World Bank.
In Malawi in May, a peaceful official demonstration, led by the Congress of Trades Unions, against IMF and World Bank reform policies and calling for the government to consider peoples’ needs before conceding to donors’ demands was broken-up by police with tear gas.
Bank and Fund staff have complained that the Joint IMF-World Bank Implementation Committee (JIC), which has been established to coordinate work on the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) program is just “political whitewash”.
A new report by Friends of the Earth-US, The IMF: Selling the Environment Short, highlights how the IMF’s growth-led development model and its approach to stabilisation are unsustainable and fail to consider the implications of ecological limits.
The IMF has suspended lending to Moldova because the parliament has refused to allow the state-run wine and tobacco industries to be privatized.
Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist, took the opportunity of the extensive media interest in the planned protests against the Bank and IMF at their Spring Meetings to launch an attack on IMF policy advice and practices.
The new buzz word in the global architecture debate is PSI - Private Sector Involvement.
An IMF team has started a review of the conditions it applied to bail out South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil.
The World Bank has released a draft new environment strategy for public consultation.
A workshop on Indigenous peoples, forests and the World Bank: policies and practice was held in Washington on 9-10 May to discuss nine case studies, presented by indigenous peoples, of their communities’ experiences with World Bank projects.
A number of NGOs, including World Rainforest Movement and the Italian World Bank Campaign have expressed concerns about the World Bank’s Forest Policy and Forest Policy Implementation Review process.
Leaflets with sharply contrasting views about the International Finance Corporation (IFC) were distributed at the Spring meetings.
The Post-Conflict Unit of the World Bank seeks comments/critiques from NGOs, UN agencies and others on its draft operational policy and bank procedures for war-torn areas.
The e-conference to discuss the World Bank’s Poverty World Development Report has concluded with a clear statement of what the WDR team plan to do to change their draft.
The World Bank’s draft Policy Research Report on gender is now on the web for discussion throughout June.
A new book on South Africa includes fascinating material on the World Bank’s role as policy advocate for the post-apartheid era.
At the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in April, the World Bank announced that it plans to spend more on education.
In May Chadian and international organisations called for the World Bank to delay its decision on funding the proposed Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, scheduled for early June.
A short report Inspection or Eyewash? discusses the visit of World Bank officials to hospitals of the Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC) on 8 May.
After a four month delay, Asger Christensen, World Bank Task Leader for the India Coal Sector project replied to Minewatch in May saying that the Bank could not release the mid-term review of the project.
A study released in April by Hnuti Duha (Friends of the Earth, Czech Republic) and the CEE Bankwatch Network found that World Bank resources “are directly supporting nuclear facilities in the Czech Republic”.
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on 4 May stating that “the World Bank badly mishandled an anti-poverty project that would resettle 58,000 Chinese farmers onto hotly disputed farmlands traditionally inhabited by ethnic Tibetans, according to a report by an internal bank watchdog panel”.
The Thai authorities and the World Bank, the main funders for the Pak Mun dam project, hailed the dam as a big success, but the World Commission on Dams (WCD) recently released a critical evaluation.
A new book sets out current issues in multilateral development bank reform and the way that the US pushes its interests in the institutions.
The debate on the roles of the Bank and Fund looks set to accelerate.
The new IMF policy of “lending into arrears”, that is lending to countries in financial crisis with debts owing to the private sector, has been applied to Ecuador.
The Organizacion Defensa y Conservacion Ecologica de Intag has written again to the Ecuadorian environment minister to request that mineral surveys from the Cotacachi-Cayapas national park are not released.
The Chief Minister of Gujarat has apparently hinted that he is applying to the World Bank for the Drinking Water component of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river which the Bank was forced to pull out of in 1993.
The first full-length study of relations between social movements and the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO has just been published.
US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has suggested that the Fund and Bank should set up outside advisory committees which would choose new heads for the institutions from a panel of candidates.
In April the US General Accounting Office has produced a report on the World Bank’s anti-corruption strategy.
Over half of companies breaching World Bank guidelines on fraud and corruption are British.
As 80% of the money the World Bank uses to make its loans actually comes from the sale of bonds to institutional investors (pension funds, universities, municipalities, etc.
In April protesters outside a Lusaka hotel where IMF and Zambian officials were meeting were dispersed by armed riot police in Zambia.
In March the UK Department for International Development published its Institutional Strategy Paper on the World Bank Group.
Sri Lankan NGOs wrote to their President in May urging him to open up the annual Aid Group meeting at the end of May.
James Wolfensohn’s disgruntlement that the Poverty Reduction Strategy Process has supplanted his own Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) is a factor in Masood Ahmed’s, former Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, decision to leave the Bank.
The IMF has told the transition government in Cote d’Ivoire that it should cut government spending after finding that spending was more than double the level agreed by the former president, who was overthrown in December 1999.
A new short briefing from the Bretton Woods Project, The A, B,C of the PRSP, drawing on discussions with IMF and Bank staff reveals the reality behind the rhetoric of the new IMF and World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
The Bretton Woods Project was first runner up in GreenNet’s Networker of the year award for its website, launched last year.
It is time for the IMF and World Bank to understand their own responsibility and decolonise their approach.
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