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Maria Romero, Mark Perera

18 Oct 2017 11:05:05

The annual meetings of the Bretton Woods Institutions (the IMF and World Bank) are over for another year. The meetings in Washington DC were held against a background of strengthened but patchy global economic growth mixed with considerable crisis risks and renewed geopolitical fights over the World Bank’s demand for a capital increase. Meanwhile, civil society organisations (CSOs) questioned the development impact of the Bretton Woods Institutions, and launched a global campaign against public-private partnerships (PPPs). IMF worries about debt (in China) and talks of taxing the rich more The 2017 Annual Meetings were preceded by the publication of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO), in which the IMF signalled stronger than expected growth forecasts for the global economy in 2017 ...

Jesse Griffiths

11 Jul 2017 16:59:06

The strangest aspect of the G20 communiqué, and the part that has dominated media coverage, is the section on the Paris climate agreement.  The strangeness arises not because of the topic – the G20 has always played second fiddle to the UN on climate issues – but because, for the first time, a whole paragraph is devoted solely to one member, the USA, explaining why it doesn’t agree with the others, followed by a paragraph by the others explaining why they will go ahead without the USA anyway, including through agreeing a “G19” action plan on energy and climate for growth.   The climate change issue is a jarring symbol of the G20’s difficulty in reaching agreement. However, the Trump administration’s ‘America first’ stance and resulting lack ...

Maria Romero, Polly Meeks

01 Jun 2017 09:40:01

Last week’s UN Financing for Development Forum showed that blended finance – using aid money to mobilise finance from other sources, especially the private sector – continues to top the agenda for many of the big players in development finance.  In fact, upcoming decisions in Paris and Brussels are likely to confirm blending as a much bigger part of Official Development Assistance (ODA) than ever before.  In Paris, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) will shortly decide on new aid rules that allow greater official support to the private sector, including blending, to be counted as ODA.  Meanwhile in Brussels, the European Commission is currently in the process of negotiating with the European Parliament ...