A quarterly critical review of developments at the World Bank and IMF

Spring 2024
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Past Issues

IFI governance

Analysis

Undemocratic gentleman's agreement will further challenge next IMF managing director

9 April 2024

Artcover of the Observer Spring 2024, showing cartoons representing the IMF and World Bank shaking hands holding the EU and US flags respectively

EU countries’ backing of Kristalina Georgieva for a second term as IMF Managing Director will likely set in motion the next steps towards her reappointment, representing another lost opportunity to reform IMF governance.

Finance

Commentary

Better ways to reduce the pain of debt crises for developing countries?

Amid challenging global conditions, proposals to address liquidity issues must be urgently matched by a reformed, development-focused international financial architecture.

IFI governance

Analysis

IDA21: Moving beyond a focus on ‘historic’ replenishment

Calls for a ‘historic’ IDA21 replenishment risk diverting attention from the policy framework necessary for IDA to support countries to break their dependence on development finance and undertake the ecologically sustainable and just economic transformation long sought by their populations.

Social services

Analysis

Beyond the World Bank: The fight for universal social protection in the Global South

The World Bank Group promotes a model of social protection via poverty-targeted programmes that are error-strewn and can cause social unease, and set back progress towards universal social protection.

Finance

Analysis

Opportunity lost: World Bank's Roadmap fails to chart path to better development outcomes

Civil society renews calls for an independent external evaluation of Bank policies ahead of Spring Meetings’ focus on the operationalisation of the Roadmap and a ‘historic’ IDA21 replenishment.

Finance

News

Sri Lanka’s continued debt crisis highlights urgent need for wider reform

Sri Lanka’s inability to avoid its 17th IMF programme, and its catastrophic human rights consequences, adds to evidence of IMF and international system's failure to adequately respond to the worsening debt crisis and urgent need for debt cancellation and systemic reform.

Accountability

News

Another day, another IFC scandal

A Telegraph exposé unveils how a private hospital group in India which received £120 million in IFC investment since 2005 was running an illegal organ trading scheme, adding to a growing number of IFC-funded scandals.

Infrastructure

News

Indonesia JETP's promotion of renewable energy privatisation opposed by unions and civil society

Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership bears the clear handprint of the World Bank’s private-sector led approach to power sectors in the Global South, creating opposition from unions and civil society.

Land

News

World Bank land tenure approach contributes to displacement and food insecurity

The World Bank’s efforts to increase security of land tenure have largely amounted to a ‘formalisation’ of land property rights, which reinforce land inequalities and the disenfranchisement of rural peoples.

A quarterly critical review of developments at the World Bank and IMF

IFI governance

Analysis

Undemocratic gentleman's agreement will further challenge next IMF managing director

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