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The BRICS New Development Bank meets in Delhi, to dash green-developmental hopes?

30 March 2017 - by Patrick Bond

Will the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) bloc ever really challenge the world financial order? The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) leadership is meeting in New Delhi from 31 March to 2 April with a degree of fanfare unmatched by accomplishments. It is a good moment to assess (...)
Africa’s New Debts

23 March 2017 - by ajohnstone

Mozambique is the first major African nation in recent times to become unable to meet obligations to international creditors. In 2012, Mozambique’s obligations to its creditors amounted to 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), they now total 130 percent. Banks and investment funds were (...)
Pakistan: CPEC - A “game-changer” or another “East India Company”?

21 March 2017 - by Abdul Khaliq

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a big business proposition with huge Chinese investments spreading over 15 years having a total outlay of up to $46 billion: $35 billion on the energy sector in the mode of IPPs (independent Power Producers) and $ 11 billion for infrastructure (...)
Global South debt payments increase almost 50% in two years

15 March 2017 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Government external debt payments reach highest level in the last decade following commodity price falls and rising value of the US dollar. Figures released before US Federal Reserve meeting where interest rates are expected to be increased again, which will push debt payments higher. (...)
How years of IMF prescriptions have hurt West African health systems

3 March 2017 - by Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Thomas Stubbs

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. But its policy proposals don’t always yield positive results for the countries it purports to help. For instance, critics have argued that the IMF inhibits government spending on public health (...)
No Pravin, it was not progressive or redistributive

28 February 2017 - by Shawn Hatting

The 2017 South Africa budget is not redistributive towards the working class nor is it progressive. Rather it is a standard neoliberal budget, delivered by a state that benefits the ruling class – white and black capitalists and top state officials – and that is controlled by that very same (...)
Tribute to Wangui Mbatia

21 February 2017 - by Benoît

Wangui Mbatia was one of Kenya’s best known female activists from the late 1990s. See Kenyans MOURN Death of Wangui Mbatia, A Civil Rights Activist and Rights hero Wangui Mbatia dies, praised for ideals, heart Hi Wangui ! I won’t ask you how you are that time. I have heard you left us, (...)
When France Used the Public Debt to Colonise Morocco

17 February 2017 - by Adam Barbe

It is now widely recognised that the French protectorate over Morocco was acquired thanks to that country’s public debt. Guy de Maupassant in Bel Ami (1885) alludes to this possibility twenty years before the event! Yet still today many historians fantasise about secret financial and diplomatic (...)
Egypt’s new IMF deal comes with a huge price tag for human rights

13 February 2017 - by Mahinour El-Badrawi, Allison Corkery

The government of Egypt has sealed a loan deal with the IMF following four years of negotiations. The impacts of the structural adjustment reforms associated with the loan raise strong human rights concerns, particularly for the status of economic and social rights in the country; aggravating (...)
The Mozambican debt crisis: How a sovereign state was sold

9 February 2017 - by Mary Serumaga

In 2013 Mozambican government officials formed three private companies and took out illegal secret loans totaling $2 billion. Donors suspended credit to Mozambique because of the loans as the national currency fell by 70% in 2016. Restructuring the illegal loans means imposed austerity on a (...)
Mozambique defaults on its debt

3 February 2017 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Mozambique’s secret loans crisis has entered a new phase after the government missed a payment on its debts. Can you take action now in solidarity with campaigners in Mozambique? The country was thrown into crisis last year by the revelation that government officials had taken out $1.1 billion (...)
Labour movements in Congo Brazzaville: Between oppression and self determination

31 January 2017 - by Etanislas Ngodi

Unions have historically been important agents of socio-political change in Congo. But today, the rights of workers are increasingly violated in the context of the current economic crisis. Fearing repression, some union leaders submit to the political party in power in the hope of collecting (...)
5,000 sacked for demanding higher wages: The human cost of Bangladesh’s $27-billion garment industry

31 January 2017 - by Ikhtisad Ahmed

In December, the government responded to a peaceful strike by workers with use of force, legal action and arrests. Supplanting India, Bangladesh is currently the second largest exporter of readymade garments in the world. This principal source of foreign earning brought in $27 billion in (...)
Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961)

18 January 2017 - by Sean Jacobs

56 years ago today, Congolese prime minister and anticolonial leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. Patrice Lumumba was prime minister of a newly independent Congo for only seven months between 1960 and 1961 before he was murdered, fifty-six years ago today. He was thirty-six. Yet (...)
Tunisia: 6 years after a quasi-revolution, a never-ending interregnum

18 January 2017 - by Fausto Giudice

6 years is nothing when you are 90 years old. But for people aged between 20 and 30, it is a very long time. Six years ago, the Tunisian people witnessed the escape of a petty dictator, whose evacuation to a golden exile in the shadow of the Saudi derricks was arranged by the US embassy. What (...)
New Witch Hunt in Ecuador Against Indigenous and Environment Defenders

6 January 2017 - by Moira Birss

Ecuador became an even more difficult place to be a defender of indigenous rights and the environment. You would think a country with constitutionally-enshrined protections for Mother Nature would support and encourage indigenous and environmental rights defenders, but sadly that is not the (...)
South Africa’s Deprivations and Depravations Revealed in Jacob Zuma’s Meltdown

30 December 2016 - by Patrick Bond

This week could well be remembered as South Africa’s most important political inflection point since the September 2008 ousting of sitting President Thabo Mbeki by his own party, the African National Congress (ANC). His main tormenter then was Jacob Zuma, who – following a brief handover period – (...)
Blind borrowing – Is Pakistan fast slipping into a debt trap?

8 December 2016 - by Dr. Kamal Monnoo

Owing to slowdown in exports and provided external borrowing are not capped, Pakistan’s external debt to export ratio is projected to be at 442% by 2019-20, which obviously will make it unserviceable. Exports, which used to finance 80% of imports in the early 2000s, now finance less than 50% of (...)
Are we heading for another debt crisis? If so, what should we be doing?

7 December 2016 - by Duncan Green

Just when you thought life couldn’t get more retro (Leonard Cohen on the radio, post-Brexit trade negociations, impending nuclear war), here comes another debt crisis. Probably. Had a good briefing from some key wonks in Development Finance International and the Jubilee Debt Campaign, two small (...)
Fidel Castro: The debt is unpayable

29 November 2016 - by Fidel Castro Ruz

This is the transcription of a speech by President Fidel Castro, at the Continental Dialogue on the Foreign Debt held at Havana’s Palace of Conventions on august 3rd, 1985. Introduction to Fidel Castro’s Speech, by Eric Toussaint In 1985, Fidel Castro launched an international campaign to (...)
What other countries can learn from Costa Rica’s debt repudiation

1 November 2016 - by Eric Toussaint

In January 1917, the government of Costa Rica, under President Alfredo González, was overthrown by his Secretary of the Army and Navy, Federico Tinoco, who called new elections and established a new constitution in June 1917. The Tinoco putsch was supported by the oligarchy, who rejected the (...)
BRICS fantasies and unintended revelations

25 October 2016 - by Patrick Bond

As the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa meet this weekend (8th-9th of september) for a summit in India, one consistency is observable from all the BRICS elites: A stream of anti-imperialist chatter even when the intent is to assimilate into imperialism. The BRICS’ real (...)
Fathi Chamkhi (Tunisia): “Cancel all debts proven to be illegitimate by audit”

24 October 2016 - by Fathi Chamkhi, Dominique Lerouge, Bertold du Ryon, Freddy Mathieu

Fathi is a member of the leadership of the Tunisian Popular Front, who has also been a militant in the Assembly for International Alternative Development (RAID Attac/Cadtm in Tunisia) since it was founded. He played a leading role in the introduction of the Audit of Public Debt bill on June 14. (...)
The fall and rise of Ghana’s debt: How a new debt trap has been set

19 October 2016 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Ghana is in a debt crisis. Having had significant amounts of debt cancelled a decade ago, the country is losing around 30% of government revenue in external debt payments each year. Ghana’s crisis is the result of a gradual increase in lending and borrowing off the back of the discovery of oil (...)
2016 IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings: The Bretton Woods Institutions stuck in policy dilemmas

17 October 2016 - by Bodo Ellmers, Tiago Stichelmans, Mathieu Vervynckt

This year’s Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank took place against the backdrop of continued sluggish growth in developed and developing countries alike. The impact of the commodity price crash weighs heavily on many developing countries and has caused a significant fall in global trade. (...)

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Finance against people

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Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

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