A new IEG report highlights persistent concerns with the World Bank’s monitoring and evaluation systems and ‘sluggish’ management response, and raises questions about the effectiveness of the Bank’s integration of gender within its operations.
Despite their popularity, PPPs have a very bad track record of delivering cost-effective investment for governments, and pose additional and serious problems by reducing transparency and accountability.
As Eurozone countries agree a new loan package to Greece, the IMF has conceded to ‘major concessions’ instead of up front debt relief and may participate in a new programme despite its insistence that the Fund's involvement in future programmes is dependent on ‘significant debt relief’.
The World Bank has released its Forest Action Plan, but civil society raised concerns, including regarding lack of impact in light of the outcomes of the safeguards review and the links to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
Two UN committees and a special rapporteur have questioned development aid funding going to private education, including through IFC supported Bridge International Academies.
Further concerns have been raised over dilutions of the World Bank’s proposed new safeguards framework, as controversy arose over a Bank waiver of the indigenous peoples policy for a Tanzania project.
The upcoming Clean Technology Fund (CTF) resource shortfall continues to raise concerns. A proposal for “CTF 2.0” will be discussed, including two proposed modalities: CTF Green Markets and the Risk Mitigation Facility. Concerns were raised over safeguards for a geothermal energy project in Indonesia.
The Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) has called for urgent donations to be able to finance projects pending approval. The CIF strategic directions paper proposed for a new private sector window to be set up. Concerns were raised about community consultations in Samoa and around resettlement risks related to a Haiti project.
In response to increasing concern about the safety of human rights and environmental defenders, the World Bank’s accountability mechanisms look to improve complainant protection against retaliation and intimidation.
NGOs have called on the Bank and Fund to ensure that states’ basic needs, rather than just ability to pay, is incorporated in their review of the Debt Sustainability Framework used to assess low income countries.
Civil society responds to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim statement on human rights abuses and displacement by calls for the World Bank to suspend funding to Honduras amid continued human rights concerns.
A US Congresswoman has called for an end to the World Bank’s investments in water privatisation until a robust evaluation has taken place.
The World Bank has signed a co-financing agreement with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, while former Bank staff join the new institution.
Notes from a side event at the inaugural Global Infrastructure Forum, during the World Bank/IMF 2016 spring meetings, discussing the role of the new development finance institutions, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank.
Notes from the opening plenary of the inaugural Global Infrastructure Forum, during the World Bank/IMF spring meetings 2016.
The Bretton Woods Project has published a new briefing providing a critical analysis of the IMF's latest work on gender equality. The briefing questions the sustainability of the Fund's new approach to gender equality and reveals that the Fund's analysis so far is limited and inconsistent with the full achievement of women's economic empowerment.
