Environment

News

Further embarrassment over Botnia

12 December 2007

Minutes before cutting the ribbon of inauguration for the IFC-funded pulp mill owned by Finnish Company Oy Metsa Botnia in Uruguay at the start of November, Erikki Varis, CEO of the Finnish company was ordered to hold off by the Spanish government

Private Sector

Analysis

The International Finance Corporation: Behind the rhetoric

There is evidence that the IFC's financing of small and medium enterprises, almost all of which occurs via financial intermediaries, is under-supervised, and that direct lending is still focused on large companies in emerging market economies with questionable value-added.

4 December 2007 | At Issue

Background

Your support of the Bretton Woods Project is crucial

Bretton Woods Project seeks reader support

4 December 2007

Environment

News

IFC: carbon cowboys in the Amazon

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) risk breaching their own social and environmental safeguards if they provide funding for the Peru liquefied natural gas project, or Camisea II.

4 December 2007

IFI governance

News

Ungovernable debate over Fund governance reform

With the wait for new leadership at the IMF over and the deadline for a deal on quota reform looming, the hard bargaining over power at the Fund will now begin. Still no end to European dominance of the institution is in site.

4 December 2007

Finance

News

Less carrot, more stick please

As negotiations close over donations to the World Bank's financing arm for low income countries, civil society groups have expressed disappointment over the failure to make progress on conditionality, debt sustainability, allocation or impact assessment.

4 December 2007

Rights

News

World Bank: head in the sand over 'peace conduit'

NGO Friends of the Earth Middle East has expressed concern over the World Bank's involvement in the Red Sea to Dead Sea water conveyance project, in particular its failure to consider alternatives that would tackle the root cause of the Dead Sea's degradation

4 December 2007

Environment

News

Climate contradictions: World Bank sets up shop in Bali

The key role that the World Bank is preparing to play in December's international climate change conference in Bali sits uncomfortably with its continued commitment to fossil fuel funding and failure to make a meaningful shift in its energy lending

4 December 2007

Finance

News

New World Bank financing instruments

Two areas that Robert Zoellick's Bank is likely to focus on are the promotion of risk management instruments, and developing local currency bond markets.

4 December 2007

Conditionality

Commentary

IMF flees Bangladesh

An IMF mission visited Dhaka in September 2007 to sign a PSI and put another chain around the country's neck. But the people of Bangladesh did not behave as the mission expected. They said a loud “NO” to the IMF mission.

4 December 2007 | Guest comment

Land

News

Failing small farmers: The World Bank and agriculture

Stinging from a critique from its own evaluation unit on its work on agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank released its flagship annual report on agriculture in October to heavy criticism from civil society.

4 December 2007