Accountability

News

El Banco Mundial y el FMI lanzan revisiones de transparencia

23 April 2009

Los grupos de la sociedad civil sintiéndose muy conscientes de los problemas que tienen para ganar el acceso a la información en el Banco Mundial y el FMI, confían que las revisiones sobre la transparencia y la revelación de este año produzcan una mejora radica.

Accountability

News

World Bank and IMF launch disclosure reviews

Civil society groups, painfully aware of information access problems at the World Bank and IMF, hope this year's reviews of transparency and disclosure will bring radical improvement.

23 April 2009

Environment

Analysis

REDD and the rights of Indigenous Peoples

One of the most contentious issues under discussion in current climate change debates is how to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) by ensuring protection of the world's rainforests. Mrinalini Rai of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change argues that this initiative, heavily backed by the World Bank among others, raises questions about how to ensure fair compensation to those developing countries that undertake a commitment to such reductions.

17 April 2009 | At Issue

Finance

News

Not much on offer for poor countries to counter the crisis

The world's poor are being hard hit by a crisis for which they are not responsible. Low-income countries will face a financing gap of hundreds of billions of dollars this year. More than $2 trillion have been found to boost Northern economies and emerging markets. Yet richer countries have committed just over one twentieth of the additional development finance required to compensate low-income countries for the shock they face resulting from this crisis.

17 April 2009

Environment

News

IFC's role in Yemen mining

Trends in the relationship between World Bank and IFC technical assistance policies and the IFC's investment portfolio raise interesting questions over possible conflicts of interest. Disclosure at the IFC remains opaque making specific details of projects and policies hard to come by.

17 April 2009

IFI governance

News

IMF: Bigger but not much nicer

World leaders agreed at the G20 to treble the size of the IMF's resources, but critics worry about strengthening the Fund without fundamental reform of its governance and conditionality.

17 April 2009

Finance

News

Latin America: Return to the IMF or reinforce alternatives?

Today, Latin American countries are faced with the option of returning to international and regional financial institutions - IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) - or rejecting the failed recipes of the 1990s in order to build and reinforce alternatives that allow them to face the current crisis.

17 April 2009

Infrastructure

News

US Congress votes against funding World Bank climate fund

In the midst of intensifying global discussions on climate change due to culminate in Copenhagen in December, the US congress voted not to fund the World Bank's Clean Technology Fund (CTF) for 2009.

17 April 2009

Rights

News

World Bank's "environment" loan to Brazil: for what?

Once again the World Bank is lending money to Brazil, but without adequate transparency or participation of civil society.

17 April 2009

Conditionality

News

IMF emergency loans: Greater flexibility to overcome the crisis?

Despite promising rhetoric, new IMF loans show no greater flexibility in fiscal and monetary policies because of the current crisis. The Fund is still pushing tighter fiscal policy and single-digit inflation.

17 April 2009

Social services

News

World Bank under fire over support for private sector health care

The debate over the World Bank's support for private sector investment in health care provision in developing countries is in the limelight again. A new report by Oxfam asserts that while the private sector can play a role in health care, evidence shows that only scaling up of private sector provision of services is likely to deliver health benefits for poor people.

17 April 2009

Infrastructure

News

World Bank still supporting carbon-intensive future

The World Bank Group will kick off the revision of its energy sector strategy, which is to take place during fiscal year 2010 with an issues paper due out this autumn. US based NGO Bank Information Center (BIC) recently published World Bank Energy Sector Lending: Encouraging the World's Addiction to Fossil Fuels, a study on the World Bank's approach to energy sector investments. The assessment finds that important gains in renewable energy and energy efficiency in recent years still do not compe

17 April 2009

Environment

Commentary

Ghana's off-shore nightmare

The IFC ignored due process requirements mandated by the laws of Ghana in the case of the Jubilee oil field project and should not have considered the loan applications at the board. In so dong the IFC is encouraging the infringement of the basic rules of governance and transparency.

17 April 2009 | Guest comment

Land

News

DFID snuggling up to the Bank?

In February the UK Department for International Development (DFID) belatedly released its latest annual report on its relationship with the World Bank. This continues a tradition which sees these reports appear at irregular intervals. As with previous annual reports there is a marked absence of the critiques heard from the Banks Independent Evaluation Group, the Parliament's International Development Committee or civil society for the period reviewed.

14 April 2009

Accountability

News

G20 ‘trillion’ dollar magic trick

To great fanfare, the G20 announced a $1.1 trillion global package, which will actually deliver less than half that amount in new or guaranteed resources. Meanwhile issues of fundamental economic reform were left off the agenda.

3 April 2009

IFI governance

Background

The IMF's special drawing rights (SDRs)

The special drawing right (SDR) is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries.

1 April 2009 | Inside the institutions