Rich Nations, IMF Deepen World Stagnation

By Jomo Kwame SundaramKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 13 2023 (IPS) With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst. Extreme poverty continues to be high and is now worse than before the pandemic in low-income countries (LICs) and among those affected by fragility, violence and conflict. The promise of eradicating poverty worldwide by 2030 has become unachievable. Jomo Kwame SundaramThe Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings in Marrakech in October were only the second-ever in Africa. But the rich nations-dominated BWIs failed yet again to rise to the challenges of our times, setting Africa and the global South even further back. Instead of fostering cooperation to address the causes and effects of the contemporary catastrophe, neither the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank governors could agree on joint communiques due to the greater politicisation of multilateral fora. Indebtedness immobilises governments Indebtedness and restrictive creditor rules prevent governments from spending more counter-cyclically to overcome the many contractionary tendencies of recent times, besides preventing them from addressing looming social and environmental crises. The G20’s largest twenty economies have urged strengthening “multilateral coordination by official bilateral and private creditors … to ...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Civil Society COVID-19 Economy & Trade Environment Financial Crisis Global Headlines Labour Poverty & SDGs TerraViva United Nations IPS UN Bureau Source Type: news