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A Critique of the IMF's Role and Policy Conditionality |
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20 August 2008
Category: Report & Analysis
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In June 2001, the German Foundation for International Development, the German Federal Government (Finance Ministry and BMZ) and the International Monetary Fund Institute, organised an International Policy Dialogue on Ownership and Conditionality, in Berlin.
The Third World Network was represented at this meeting by its Director, Martin Khor. Other NGOs present were WEED (Germany) and Bretton Woods Project (UK). Most of the participants were senior representatives from the IMF and officials from Germany and several developing countries.
At the meeting, Martin Khor spoke in one of the sessions and also made comments in other sessions. The presentation and comments by TWN's Director have been written in an "Issues Note" which was submitted to the organisers after the meeting, and edited and reproduced in this format for the TWN Global Economy Series.
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Limited Impact of FDI on Economic Growth In Latin America |
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16 June 2008
Category: News & Updates
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With some exceptions, foreign investment has fallen far short of stimulating broad-based economic growth and environmental protection in Latin America, according to a report by the Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas.
The report recommended that national and regional policies aimed at improving national firms’ capabilities should be implemented and that the “policy space” for such policies should be accommodated in bi-lateral, regional, and global trade and investment treaties.
The report by the Working Group, which reviewed the impacts of foreign investment liberalization and related economic reforms in the region, is expected to be released on 19 June at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC.
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Paris Declaration Undermines Policy Space through Aid |
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09 April 2008
Category: News & Updates
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The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness may have the effect of circumscribing national sovereignty and country autonomy over development policies contrary to its stated principles of country ownership and mutual accountability, research has shown.
Two recent studies have highlighted the propensity of new modalities of aid and aid harmonisation processes under the Paris Declaration framework to increase rather than reduce donor interventions in aid recipient countries and exacerbating the imbalances of power between donor and recipient countries.
The Paris Declaration was adopted in 2005 as a ‘roadmap’ to increase the quality of aid, and development assistance is increasingly influenced by whether the recipient developing countries comply with the Declaration’s principles.
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World Bank Still Pushing Economic Policy Conditions |
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12 November 2007
Category: News & Updates
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The World Bank has made only limited progress in reducing the number of economic policy conditions, such as privatisation and trade liberalisation, attached to its financing but is instead reclassifying and bundling together conditions in order to downplay use of such conditionalities, a study has found.
A report released last Friday by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) concludes that in spite of Bank’s claims to the contrary, the number of controversial economic policy conditions contained in grants and loans to low-income countries remain, at best, unchanged or at worse, increased slightly in the two years since the Bank’s implementation of its Good Practice Principles (GPP) on conditionality.
The following is an article on the Eurodad report, “Untying the Knots: How the World Bank is Failing to Deliver Real Change on Conditionality” which concludes that more than two thirds of Bank loans and grants still have economic policy reforms attached to them as conditions.
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Debt-Relief Countries Can Make Use of More Policy Space |
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04 December 2006
Category: Report & Analysis
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The recent series of debt cancellations under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC-I) and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) may offer eligible countries opportunities for expanding domestic policy space, enabling countries to choose from various macroeconomic and development policy options.
The completion of the HIPC-I debt relief programme and the upfront and irrevocable cancellation of eligible debt stock under the MDRI may now enable these countries to graduate from the economic supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions. This may provide countries the space to develop their own national development strategies alternative to the policy prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Below is an analysis of the MDRI and its possibilities for expanded policy space in developing countries.
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Oslo Conference Finds World Bank, IMF Still Pushing Conditions |
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30 November 2006
Category: News & Updates
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Developing countries taking policy loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank still have privatization and liberalization conditionalities attached to their loans, while the two institutions also make use of other methods to push their policies onto developing countries. These views emerged at a Conference on Conditionality organized here on 28 November by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry in Oslo.
The origins of the conference lie in the political platform formulated by the Norwegian coalition government which in its Soria Moria Declaration stated that “Norwegian aid should not support programmes that are made conditional on liberalization and privatization.” The conference saw a lively debate, including between policymakers, NGOs, researchers and agency representatives, on the content and process of conditionality in Bank and Fund loans.
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Norway Conference Will Review IMF-World Bank Conditionality |
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24 November 2006
Category: News & Updates
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Pressure on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to change the policy conditionalities attached to their loans is expected to grow from a conference being hosted next week by the Norwegian government to discuss this issue.
The conference in Oslo on 28-29 November will bring together government officials from donor countries, academics, NGOs and international agencies to review these policy conditionalities and plan follow-up action.
Meanwhile, a study commissioned for the conference by the Norwegian government has been critical of how the Bretton Woods institutions were still pressurising borrowing countries to implement privatization and trade liberalization, in spite of rhetoric to contrary.
The study also found that there remains a notable absence of “policy space” in many of these countries to implement economic policies contrary to those advocated by the Bank and the Fund despite the institutions’ conceptual shift towards “ownership” as a principle guiding their lending operations.
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