World Bank

Oxfam welcomes the G20’s attention to the sovereign debt crisis in the Global South, but warns about the risks involved in the G20’s approach to resolve it, outlined in more details in the IMF and World Bank Non-Paper on Actions to Support Countries Faced With Liquidity Challenges.  

We strongly support the approach’s aim to significantly increase the net flow of resources to the Global South to back ambitious, country-owned national development and climate strategies. We urge the G20 to adopt several elements of the plan, including increasing bilateral grants, reviewing relevant IMF policies, increasing IMF and multilateral development banks’ resources including but not limited to a generous IDA21 replenishment, and redoubling efforts to promote effective and equitable domestic resources mobilization.

The current debate about sovereign debt liquidity challenges in the Global South covers four distinct issues, which are sometimes conflated.

Income inequality is high or increasing in 60 percent (64 out of 106) of low- and middle-income countries receiving grants or loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, reveals new Oxfam analysis ahead of the 2024 Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. Countries with high levels of income inequality have Gini coefficients above 0.4, the warning level set by the United Nations.

In response to the COP28 decision to advance the establishment of a loss and damage fund, Lyndsay Walsh, Oxfam’s Climate Policy Advisor, said: “After 32 years of pressure and 27 COPs, we finally have a loss and damage fund. Despite the shortcomings in its structure, this is a very welcome step towards supporting people recovering from the severe and irreparable consequences of climate-fueled disasters. However, this isn’t the end of the journey."

This report examines the support to private healthcare provision in India by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Despite supporting private healthcare in the country since 1997, no healthcare results for lending and investments have been disclosed since the start of these operations over twenty-five years ago.

As global greenhouse emissions continue to rise, and climate change wreaks more havoc upon the people and places least responsible for the problem, rich polluting countries are now three years overdue on their promise to mobilize $100 billion a year in climate finance for low- and middle-income countries.

In response to the selection today of Ajay Banga as President of the World Bank for a five-year term beginning 2 June, Katie Malouf-Bous, interim Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: "The true test of Ajay Banga starts now: to reorient the World Bank to tackle the extreme inequality that robs billions of people of economic security and dignity. We need huge new investments in development but we need them to be publicly-led and purposed to lift people out of poverty —and we need guardrails around private finance that has run riot for too long."

2023 could be a turning point. A year when the world emerges from unprecedented crises, and governments deliver progressive reforms that build a brighter future for all, and for the planet.

But despite the dire economic situation facing the poorest countries today, and much political discussion of the trillions needed to tackle poverty, inequality and climate change, there is no indication that rich countries are willing to pay the true price of a fair and sustainable future. 

New Oxfam analysis describes a $27 trillion black hole – accumulating at around $3.9 trillion a year to 2030 – that low-and-middle income countries face to meet climate-related loss and damages, adaptation, and mitigation measures, along with their health, education and social protection needs.