IF-EYE Newsletter

2. Civil Society Highlights

New ActionAid report looks at effects of IMF policies on education

7/25/2007 ActionAid

A new ActionAid report on education in Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone, finds that a major factor behind the chronic and severe shortage of teachers is that IMF policies have required many poor countries to freeze or curtail teacher recruitment.

Read ActionAid's report

Read IMF's response

Read ActionAid's rebuttal to IMF

Blogging each step of the way: Online voices Follow IMF Leadership Debate

IFIwatchnet

From the first rumors following the resignation of Rodrigo de Rato to the most recent critiques of the EU's selection process, an IFIwatchnet blog chronicles each step toward a new IMF leader. Visit the blog 

With the click of a mouse, Europeans pressure World Bank

7/2007 World Bank Campaign Europe

A new website allows Europeans to tell their finance ministers what they think of World Bank policies on conditionality and climate change through a system of online voting. 

Gender in reconstruction: The World Bank's neglected promise

7/2007 Gender Action: Elaine Zuckerman and Suzanna Dennis with Marcia E. Greenberg

The World Bank fails to meet is promise of integrating gender into all investments in post-conflict reconstruction situations, a Gender Action paper revealed last month.  It recommends the Bank stop imposing harmful policy reforms such as public expenditure and civil service cutbacks, systematically address violations against women’s rights and promote gender equality to make peace work.

Read the paper on the Gender Action website 

U.S. House under pressure to pass End Oil Aid Act

6/5/2007 End Oil Aid coalition

Over 30 environmental, development and faith-based organizations sent a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives calling for its support of the End Oil Aid Act.

“The U.S. can play a critical role in fighting our addiction to oil, alleviating global poverty and combating climate change as we move toward a clean energy future. Using taxpayer dollars to support the oil industry undermines these goals, and Congress should end this international ‘oil aid,’” the letter states.

Read more at the Oil Change International website 

3. SPOTLIGHT: International Finance Corporation investments in Middle East & North Africa top $1 billion

By Amy Ekdawi, Middle East and North Africa Program Manager, and Nikki Reisch, Africa Program Manager, Bank Information Center

As its financial year came to a close at the end of June, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) recorded its highest ever volume of new commitments to the Middle East & North Africa region. Standing at $1.2 billion, the IFC's signed commitments for Fiscal Year 2007 represented nearly double its investments in the previous year, making MENA the IFC's fastest-growing regional portfolio.

The IFC has indicated that it intends to maintain high levels of private investment in the region, focusing primarily on financial markets such as in the housing and small/medium enterprise (SME) sectors, as well as oil, gas and infrastructure projects. The IFC has also suggested that it will prioritize involvement in what it deems "frontier countries," namely Iraq, Yemen, West Bank & Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, though Pakistan and Egypt continue to receive the largest shares of IFC financing in the region.

Apart from its own investments, the IFC facilitates private sector involvement in the region by advising governments on the implementation of investor-friendly reforms, including the privatization of state-owned banks and public utilities such as water services. The IFC indirectly takes the lead on many of these reforms through its managerial role in the multi-donor Private Enterprise Partnership (PEP-MENA) program, in addition to providing advisory services for its own account;

Read more about the involvement of the IFC and other international financial institutions in the MENA region on BIC's website

4. SPOTLIGHT: The New IDB: Discontent, confusion, non-transparency – How to become relevant in Latin America

7/12/2007 Vince McElhinny, Latin America Program Manager, Bank Information Center

Whatever else you might say of him, Luis Alberto Moreno does not waste time. Named fourth president of the Inter-American Development Bank in 2005, Moreno announced the IDB would remake its role in Latin America at his first annual meeting just one year later. What has followed, in short order, is anxiety, confusion and criticism—from within and outside of the organization—and still very little idea of just what implementation of the realignment will bring.

Read BIC's new policy brief on the IDB realignment process, components and concerns  

5. SPOTLIGHT: World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group offers some advice to the new President

7/20/2007

New leadership offers the opportunity for change, a July 2 letter from the Director-General of the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) to President Zoellick begins.

The group offers recommendations to the new President in seven areas:

• Africa and low-income countries. The Bank must continue to prioritize Africa, and explore why development results have been weaker in the region. Rural development programs need to be better integrated, and programs in fragile states should be selectively strengthened.  
• Middle-income countries. The Bank should more aggressively introduce new financial instruments and increase its use of the 'country systems' approach.
• Cross-border problems. Country, regional and global programs need to be better linked. Cross-border initiatives need to supplement the current country focus.
• Sustainable development and climate change should constitute a new third pillar in the Bank's poverty reduction strategies, alongside investment climate and social empowerment. 
• Governance and anti-corruption initiatives should be well-integrated into country and thematic programs. In-country demand for good governance is critical.
• Work across functional boundaries. The Bank should promote collaboration across the World Bank, IFC and MIGA.
• An early internal governance review is important, in collaboration with the Board.

Robert Zoellick assumed leadership of the World Bank earlier this summer, following the departure of Paul Wolfowitz. Many have been watching for early signs of the new President's priorities for the institution.

6. SPOTLIGHT: World Bank 101: BIC's new primer on the World Bank

July 2007 Bank Information Center

Excerpt from Chapter 2: The World Bank Group in Your Country

The World Bank's Preemption Doctrine: A Misguided Mission

The World Bank often says: If we don’t finance this project, someone else would, and it would be worse.

But in reality: The World Bank is a public financial institution with limited resources. Its stated objective is to promote sustainable development and reduce poverty. It has neither the mandate nor the means to prevent all bad projects from taking place or to make all potentially harmful investments slightly less damaging. Arguing that a project will be better if the Bank is involved is not sufficient or sound rationale for supporting it. Indeed, this logic could justify Bank involvement in any operation, from a toxic chemical factory to a highway through a rainforest, in order to pre-empt others from doing it more carelessly. In recent years, the Bank has frequently held out the threat of Chinese financing as a justification for its own, pre-emptive involvement in various high-impact projects. Given its finite resources and the opportunity costs of activities it undertakes, the Bank should select projects on the basis of their likelihood to make a positive contribution to poverty reduction.

7. Announcements and Resources

Week of action against debt

10/14-21/07 Various organizations

Citizens worldwide will speak out during the Week of Global Action Against Debt and IFIs October 14 to 21, 2007. 

Read more on www.debtweek.org

Bribes Anonymous: New website publicizes underhand offerings

Trace International

Trace International has launched Bribeline.org, a virtual space to anonymously report bribes made by organizations and governments around the world. Trace hopes the service will help fight corruption.

Read a Forbes article on Bribeline here

8.New at BIC: BIC welcomes new Information Services Coordinator Srabani Roy!

Srabani recently graduated with a Master of Science from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, Srabani worked for three years as the Programme and Project Development Specialist for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where her interest in international development flourished. Srabani worked with program staff to develop sustainable, pro-poor policies in community-based natural resources management and disaster preparedness, equity and governance, enterprise development and information and knowledge management initiatives and projects across the Hindu Kush-Himalayas. Srabani also worked for several years as an environmental consultant for Abt Associates Inc., and has a Master of Arts in Energy and Environmental Policy from Boston University. Contact Srabani at: sroy@bicusa.org.