A new report from UK NGO CAFOD criticises the IMF response to the financial crisis as “inadequate and at times harmful to the interests of the poor” and urges “deep reforms”.
Finance
Finance
News
Ecological debt outweighs financial debt
The view that poor countries owe the rich millions of dollars in loan repayments is challenged by a Christian Aid report.
Conditionality
News
PNG Government avoids conditionality
Relations between the Bank and the government of Papua New Guinea were strained in July by the government’s decision to issue bonds to raise money from the private sector.
Finance
News
IMF policies fuel social crisis in Ecuador
In July, rising transport and fuel prices in Ecuador led to strikes and public protests, and an up-rising by thousands of indigenous people who are also concerned about privatisation plans.
Conditionality
News
Strikers in Colombia in protest at IMF and debt
In late August Colombian labour unions began an indefinite national strike in protest at the government’s political, social, and economic agenda and calling on the government to declare a moratorium on the payment of its internal and external debt.
Accountability
News
Politics before good policies in Zimbabwe
The IMF has agreed to lend US$7.32 bn to the Zimbabwean government despite continued concerns about corruption in the land reform process; the cost of supporting Zimbabwean troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); a planned privatisation of the Hwange power plant; and the reintroduction of price controls.
Finance
News
Africans to challenge Washington Consensus
African NGOs met in Nairobi in August to discuss and formulate an Africa Consensus on economic and social development to challenge the Washington Consensus.
Conditionality
News
Initiative changes
The G7 have agreed changes to the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Debt Initiative which will impose more conditionality in return for earlier relief from interest payments.
Finance
News
ESAF reforms to focus on poverty eradication
Clare Short, UK Secretary of State for International Development, has called in parliament for the reform of the IMF’s ESAF loans to make them pro-poor.
Finance
News
G7 agree crisis mechanisms
G7 finance ministers have agreed a framework to include the private sector in future crisis bailouts.
Featured briefings
6 April 2023
World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings 2023
5 April 2023
The IMF at the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The need for governance reform
As the world celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is time the IMF’s shareholders use the opportunities provided by the anniversary and growing calls for reforms to the international financial architecture to redesign the IMF’s governance structures and programmes to ensure they are consistent with the commitments outlined in 1948 and with international human rights law.
5 April 2023
The global financial architecture and the international debt crisis: An urgent call for reform
Influence of unreformed international financial institutions and creditor interests in debt solutions in low- and middle-income countries plagued by delay and ineffective when undertaken.