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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Urgent call to the World Bank Group to strengthen public health financing and refrain from promoting public-private partnerships in health care

• 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.

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.

Loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) largely come with policy change conditions attached – conditions that the IMF has played a significant role in developing. This analysis confirms the findings of other research, which shows that the IMF uses its significant influence to promote controversial austerity and liberalisation measures, with potentially severe impacts on the poorest people around the globe.

A joint report by Eurodad and ActionAid

With a fifty year history of involvement in key sectors of Ghana’s economy, the World Bank continues to maintain an influential position in the country.