The World Bank’s Investment Lending Reforms (ILR) could significantly shift the way in which the institution operates. In mid-2010, the World Bank will begin holding worldwide public consultations on its proposed design of investment lending reforms, even though many of the reforms are already being implemented. This paper raises questions about the nature and the implications of the Bank’s investment lending reforms as a prelude to this consultation process.
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Since 1990, financing to the private sector by multilateral development banks (MDBs) - has increased ten-fold, from less than $4 billion to more than $40 billion per year. Private sector finance is now a major part of the overall portfolio of many multilaterals. "As organisations that work for poverty eradication, environmental sustainability and human rights, we believe this area of MDB operations can have significant impacts in developing countries, yet is little known and under-examined."
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A lot has changed since 1995, partly in response to the Halifax G7 Summit and subsequent G7 and G8 meetings. Too many of these improvements, however, exist only on paper. Beyond the surface, the neo-liberal, market-oriented bias that guides the Bank and Fund’s agenda and thinking has not altered. The 2010 G8 Summit in Toronto in 2010 takes place during another "time of change and opportunity". The financial crisis has spurred many civil society organizations (CSOs) to insist on far-reaching changes to the global financial system and its institutions. Clearly, as this publication will illustrate, 15 years of refusing to deal with the manifest shortcomings of the global economic system is enough.
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The Cancun Declaration comprises ten items and a global framework to evaluate the institutional reforms agreed as part of the Bank’s Ninth General Capital Increase. These items partially address some of the concerns raised by different civil society organizations from all over the continent working on the follow-up to IDB policies and on making the impacts of its projects in the region visible. Nevertheless, from these same organizations we believe that there still remain items to be reinforced and challenges to be undertaken by the Bank’s management.
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Since 1994 the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has financed private sector operations. The reason for this had to do with the reduction of the state’s role in financing infrastructure and the liberalization and privatization that took place in the region. In 2001 and 2006 the Board of Governors decided to increase the capacity of the Bank in this issue and in 2010 this matter will continue to be on the agenda. Social organizations deem essential that IDB operations without sovereign guarantees have a clear added value to sustainable development through indicators applied before the approval of projects.
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This paper examines the all important question of the incidence of financial transaction taxes, seeking to answer the question 'who pays in the end', should FTTs be widely introduced. It shows that across a number of market segments trading volumes are increasingly dominated not by traditional investors such as pension funds or insurance firms but by high frequency traders, hedge funds and investment banks. The paper further shows that the initial incidence of the tax falls on the dominant actors who also have the capacity to absorb a large proportion of the tax. This ensures that the tax burden is highly progressive falling mainly on those most able to pay – hedge funds and investment banks and their highly paid employees. (pdf format)
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