World Bank

Fifty one of the 68 companies that were lent money by the World Bank’s private lending arm in 2015 to finance investments in sub-Saharan Africa use tax havens, Oxfam revealed today.

Oxfam is calling on the World Bank Group to put safeguards in place to ensure that its clients can prove they are paying their fair share of tax.

Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, and Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, spoke Tuesday about their institutions’ priorities ahead of next week’s spring meetings in Washington. 

The assassination last week of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres – who championed the cause of indigenous land rights – shows that international companies have no place now in continuing their support for the Agua Zarca dam she was fighting against.

Oxfam reacted to the World Bank's appointment of Philippe Le Houérou as CEO of their private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation.

Oxfam commended the World Bank for connecting the need to tackle climate change with the urgent fight to end poverty. In a new report, the Bank warned that more than 100 million additional people could be pushed into poverty by crop failures, floods, hunger, and other shocks caused by climate change. 

At the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Peru this week, moves to help combat inequality and climate change were announced, but G20 finance ministers failed to adequately address the skewed international tax system, said Oxfam today.

In a puzzling move, inequality was not on the agenda at the International Monetary Fund’s Press Briefing in the Peruvian capital today, while World Bank President Jim Kim said TPP could boost growth.

Ministers must deliver on their climate finance promises and support a second wave of attack on corporate tax cheats if their Lima meeting is to succeed, said Oxfam today. 

The World Bank is forecasting that, for the first time ever, the number of people living in extreme poverty will fall under 10% of the world's population, to around 702 million people.