The US$650 billion allocation of SDRs proposed by the IMF will not support the post-Covid economic recovery of the poorest countries. In the following article, we set out the argument for a much larger allocation, one worth US$3 trillion.

In March 2020 the World Bank Group pledged to provide US$ 160bn to client countries in the 15 months to June 2021. In this briefing we analyse the Bank's response and ask, given private finance's central role, who is truly benefitting from their Covid-19 response package? 

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World leaders failed to seize an opportunity for vital reform of the international debt architecture when they met yesterday (29 March) at the UN.

• The publication of the World Banks’ 2021 Doing Business Report was stopped in August 2020 following a scandal that uncovered data manipulation and altered scores in four countries.
• As a result of these irregularities, Saudi Arabia was named the top improving economy of 2020 around the time of the “Davos in the Desert” summit and a year after the Khashoggi murder.
• The World Bank has launched another review of the Doing Business methodology and is finally seeking feedback from CSOs, but for a meaningful and participatory consultation it must extend the deadline for feedback and organise a follow-up discussion.

More than 300 civil society organisations and academics from across the world call upon the World Bank Executive Directors to end the publication of the World Bank’s Doing Business report.

A new allocation of Special Drawing Rights would send a strong signal of renewed multilateral coordination that puts life first.

The UN FACTI report must be a starting gun for international action to stop illicit financial flows, what is needed now is for our governments to get to work.

As countries face the difficult challenge of recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, civil society is calling on the IMF to finally close the gap between its rhetoric and practice by no longer recommending austerity measures in long-term loan programmes.

Covid-19 has unleashed a crisis of unimaginable proportions. In this compilation of reports and briefings released throughout 2020, we review the impact of the pandemic on debt and development finance.

Read the book in English, French and Spanish.

Our latest report focuses on the climate emergency and how it has become a wider focus of policy discussions around debt, as extreme climatic events and environmental hazards increase both the cost of borrowing and the risk of debt crises in countries in the global south that are often already bearing large external debt stocks.

Read the report in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.