Eye on the IFIs

FINANCE: Palestinian Economy Tumbles Under Sanctions

By Emad Mekay
Under an economic embargo spearheaded by Israel, the European Union and the United States, the Palestinian economy shrank by five to 10 percent in 2006, after having experienced a modest recovery for the previous two years, an international report found Monday.

WATER DAY-CAMBODIA: Asian Development Bank Project Fails Fishermen

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
A planned survey to check the economic pulse of fishing communities living on the banks of South-east Asia's largest freshwater lake - the Tonle Sap in Cambodia - threatens to expose serious shortcomings in an Asian Development Bank (AsDB) anti-poverty initiative.

FINANCE: Never Too Poor to Spend?

By Emad Mekay
The World Bank is encouraging foreign investors and businesspeople to start pursuing the world's four billion poor people as a potentially lucrative market worth five trillion dollars, much bigger than previously thought.

FINANCE: Debt Relief Cleared for Latin Nations

By Emad Mekay
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) said Friday it will cancel 4.4 billion dollars in debt and interest owed by five of Latin America and the Caribbean's poorest countries.

FINANCE: Europeans Asked to Pull Strings at World Bank

By Emad Mekay
Campaigners across Europe have called on their governments to withhold funds from the World Bank unless specific changes are made to policy and practice at the Washington-based public lender. But analysts say that if the past is any indication, a positive response is unlikely.

INT’L WOMEN’S DAY: Major Lenders Urged to Enforce Gender Rights

By Emad Mekay
Dozens of international civil society groups have endorsed a call to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to require enforceable gender protections and equality for women as conditions for project financing in developing nations.

IRAQ: World Bank Mum Over Report of Staff Injury

By Emad Mekay
An Iraqi World Bank staffer has been wounded in Baghdad, according to an inside source in the Bank and an email message from a source on the ground in Iraq, the first casualty for an international organisation since a bombing that targeted the Baghdad U.N. headquarters in 2003.

ENVIRONMENT: The Niger River in Intensive Care

By Ousseini Issa
Stretching over more than 4,000 kilometres, the Niger is West Africa's longest river, and greatly threatened in the country of the same name by environmental degradation that is causing the water course to silt up.

FINANCE: IMF Quits Sri Lanka – May Return

By Feizal Samath
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) shut its Colombo office this month saying it no longer had a Sri Lankan programme, but economists and civil activists say the Fund is still expected to keep a watch over this war-battered nation.

FINANCE: US Cancels Liberia’s Debt, But Billions Pending

By Emad Mekay
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf gained major ground in a campaign to cancel her country's debts with the announcement Tuesday that Washington will write off some 358 million dollars in debts incurred by Liberia's previous undemocratic regimes.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Debt the Illegitimate Legacy of Africa’s Dictators

By IPS Correspondents
As the World Social Forum (WSF) draws to a close in the Kenyan capital Thursday, calls on international finance institutions to cancel debts owed to them by poor countries have grown ever louder.

EUROPE: World Bank Promotes ‘Circular Migration’

By IPS Correspondents
Most migrants from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would prefer to spend shorter periods abroad and then return home, says a new World Bank report.

FINANCE: Is the IMF Irredeemably Irrelevant?

By IPS Correspondents
Has the International Monetary Fund become completely irrelevant? Is this world body, set up more than six decades ago to foster global economic stability and help countries facing financial crises, really reforming itself? And will it become more responsive to the aspirations of developing countries?

DEVELOPMENT: Bank Focus on Growth Often Leaves Poor Behind

By IPS Correspondents
The World Bank's own auditing arm has confirmed what many anti-poverty campaigners have long been saying: the Bank's projects did not adequately reduce poverty levels in borrowing nations over the past five years.

FINANCE: ‘Bank and Fund Won’t Change Their Spots’

By IPS Correspondents
Can the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) be reformed or should they both be boycotted and dismantled? This is the growing debate that has been fuelled in the aftermath of the organisations' annual meetings in Singapore last week.

FINANCE: World Bank Careless About Development Goals – Report

By IPS Correspondents
Several developing countries are not reaching sustainable development targets fast enough despite numerous international agreements, says a report, launched here amidst criticism that World Bank energy and mining projects were not doing enough to protect the environment and improve the plight of the poor.

FINANCE: World Bank Profits From Poor Countries – Report

By IPS Correspondents
The World Bank receives more from developing countries than what it disburses to them says a new report released Tuesday as finance ministers endorsed a controversial new Bank plan to tackle corruption in developing countries.

FINANCE: Transparency Begins at Home, WB-IMF Told

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Civil society organisations gathered on this island, ahead of the annual meeting of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in neighbouring Singapore, have launched a ‘global charter' demanding transparency from the finance institutions.
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