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The method in the madness: Uganda’s budget 2018 is divorced from reality

19 June 2018 - by Mary Serumaga

The report of the Auditor General (AG) for 2016–2017 is another catalogue of systemic theft, embezzlement and wastage of public goods. In this, it is similar to audit reports going back at least two decades. It appears that incompetence as much as theft are responsible for the seeming inadequacy (...)
Argentina: Macri’s Neoliberal Fantasies

13 June 2018 - by Claudio Katz

In the middle of his term, Argentinian president Mauricio Macri cannot hide the monumental abyss between his promises and reality. The promise was of an influx of dollars to lower inflation, with high growth, job creation, an entrepreneurial boom and eradication of social assistance. A drastic (...)
BRICS in Africa: “You are either at the table or on the menu”

5 June 2018 - by Patrick Bond

At a Johannesburg BRICS think tank, scholars get drunk on their own rhetoric South African academics and think tanks met on 28-31 May 2018 for deliberations leading to the July 2018 BRICS heads of state summit to be hosted by South Africa. Most of these scholars believe that the BRICS (...)
China vs the US: The new imperial scramble for Africa and global rivalries

4 June 2018 - by Lee Wengraf

Lee Wengraf writes that the rush for profits, economic volatility and militarization across Africa promises only instability, rising exploitation and violence. Since the start of the new millennium, sub-Saharan African economies have undergone a dramatic boom. This surge has been marked by (...)
China-Africa relations without Africans’ contributions

28 May 2018 - by Daouda Cissé

The piece relates that, at times, Africans are not invited to debates, conferences and other key platforms on Africa-China relations even though the topic is about Africa’s and Africans’ relations with China and Chinese. Recent discussions and exchanges among members of a research network on (...)
Semira Adamu 1998: They killed a woman, not her fight

21 May 2018 - by Coordination Semira Adamu 2018

On September 22, 1998, during a sixth attempt to eviction, Semira Adamu was killed, suffocated with a cushion by gendarmes who acted in accordance with state-imposed expulsion techniques. A rejected asylum seeker, Semira was twenty years old. From the 127bis detention centre where she was (...)
IMF conditionality: still undermining healthcare & social protection?

15 May 2018 - by Jesse Griffiths, Gino Brunswijck

The IMF tried last year to counter long-running accusations that its lending and advice programmes damage health outcomes in developing countries, but the independent evidence points in the opposite direction. The question is whether the IMF will use this year’s reviews of its conditionality and (...)
Imperialism and Dependency: Similarities and Differences with the Marini era

8 May 2018 - by Claudio Katz, Richard Fidler

The main theorist of dependency anticipated trends of neoliberal globalization. He analyzed productive globalization, the centrality of exploitation and the relative weight of surplus value transfers. But the employment crisis exceeds what was envisaged by Marini, in a scenario disrupted by the (...)
Éric Toussaint: “There is a disposition in the world’s masses for radical left proposals”

7 May 2018 - by Eric Toussaint

On 16 April 2018, Éric Toussaint was invited to speak about the role of the central banks and the banking sector at a seminar organised by Sampreeti – Sanskriti, a cultural association linked to the All India Reserve Bank Employees Association (AIRBEA, the main trade union of the Indian central (...)
UNCTAD: Debt warning lights flash for poorest countries, experts say

7 May 2018 - by UNCTAD

Top economists from UNCTAD and the International Monetary Fund agree it’s time to sound the alarm on rising public debt in many low-income countries but disagree on how loudly the bell should be rung. Mounting public debt in some of the world’s poorest countries has leading economists worried. (...)
The BRICS, global governance, accumulation, class struggle and resource extractivism

25 April 2018 - by Patrick Bond

An exceptionally interesting debate about how imperialism is now behaving. Two leading critics of imperialism – John Smith and David Harvey – have recently fought bitterly at the Review of African Political Economy website (http://roape.net) over how to interpret geographically-shifting (...)
Damning testimonies of microcredit abuse

25 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Nathan Legrand

Contrary to what is often claimed, microcredits are not a way out of poverty; on the contrary they most often result in a greater deprivation and humiliation of their victims. On the Indian sub-continent 65 million people have taken on a microcredit, 90% are women. Worldwide, women count for (...)
India: Thriving Usury in Tirunelveli

23 April 2018 - by S. Aadhirai

The recent self-immolation of a family in Tamil Nadu drew widespread attention to the issue of usury prevalent in the state. Following a hearing on the depositions of 60 borrower victims at a people’s tribunal in Tirunelveli district, an attempt has been made to examine the nature of the issue, (...)
European Parliament sounds the alarm over developing world debt crisis

20 April 2018 - by Mark Perera

The number of poor countries facing major debt crises has doubled since 2013, and only 1 in 5 are now considered to be at low risk of crisis. With some countries in the midst of crisis and others on the brink, meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains a pipe dream, writes Mark (...)
Crony capitalism looms large on the Indian banking horizon

18 April 2018 - by Sushovan Dhar

The $1.77 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, possibly the biggest financial chicanery to have hit the Indian banking sector, is rocking the nation. Perpetrated by a diamond tycoon in collusion with bank officials, defrauding India’s second largest bank in such a manner seems astonishing. (...)
Is Pakistan falling into China’s debt trap?

16 April 2018 - by Abdul Khaliq

• Pakistan will have to payback $100 billion to China by 2024 of total investment of $18.5 billion, which China has invested on account of bank loans in 19 early harvest projects, under CPEC. • China has become the biggest lender to Pakistan after surpassing Japan. Pakistan owes $19 billion (1/5 (...)
Pro-poor or anti-poor? The World Bank and IMF’s approach to social protection

13 April 2018 - by Stephen Kidd

In recent years, the World Bank and IMF have played an influential role in shaping national social protection policies. Social protection comprises a significant share of World Bank loans, reaching almost 10 per cent of lending to low-income countries in 2017, while around 10 per cent of IMF (...)
The World Development Report produced by the World Bank almost completely ignores workers’ rights

12 April 2018 - by Peter Bakvis

The World Bank decided last year to devote the 2019 edition of its flagship annual policy review publication, the World Development Report, to the theme of the future of work. Preparation of the WDR 2019 encountered some delay after the ouster in late January of the report’s first director, the (...)
Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla: “the Continental Free Trade Area is a mistake” (Interview)

4 April 2018 - by Ndongo Samba Sylla, Maghreb Emergent

The economist Ndongo Samba Sylla is the author of the following books, among others: The Fair Trade Scandal: Marketing Poverty to Benefit the Rich and La démocratie contre la République: l’autre histoire du gouvernement du peuple. He tells Maghreb Emergent why the CFTA is “suicide for African (...)
Mozambique forced to restructure after debt default

27 March 2018 - by Abayomi Azikiwe

Economic growth proves unsustainable for the Southern African state of Mozambique in present world situation due to financial implications that have been going on for some time now. Since 2014 many energy producing emerging states in Africa and worldwide have fallen into recession resulting (...)
The Central Bank of Uganda Comes Clean About Looming Debt Distress

26 March 2018 - by Mary Serumaga

Uganda has finally admitted that there is an increasing likelihood that the country will default on its debt obligations. The (Central) Bank of Uganda issued the warning in the first quarterly State of the Economy Report of 2018. The public external debt has trebled in the last three years. (...)
Developing country debt payments increase by 60% in three years

22 March 2018 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Figures released today by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, based on IMF and World Bank databases, show that developing country debt payments increased by 60% between 2014 and 2017. They are now at the highest level since 2004. Government external debt payments reach highest level since 2004 (...)
South Africa: Cyril Ramaphosa Relaunches Neo-Liberalism

28 February 2018 - by Patrick Bond

After Jacob Zuma’s Firing, South Africa Risks Budget Austerity and Even Renewed BRICS ‘Poisoning’ Cyril Ramaphosa’s soft-coup firing of Jacob Zuma from the South African presidency on February 14, after nearly nine years in power and a humiliating struggle to avoid resigning, has contradictory (...)
The Fate of the Revolution

22 February 2018 - by Nathan Legrand

Tunisia’s ruling class is pursuing the same economic policies as the authoritarian regime it replaced. In the first half of January, a wave of protests spread across Tunisia. Most observers say that the new finance law, implemented at the beginning of the year, sparked them. Indeed, these (...)
The Doing Business Report: a longstanding controversy

5 February 2018 - by Gino Brunswijck

Recent criticism of Chile’s ranking in the Doing Business Report (DBR) has once again put the report in the spotlight, with renewed calls for scrapping the highly controversial annual World Bank publication. Over the years Eurodad has consistently demanded an end to the DBR because of its lack (...)

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Finance against people

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