IFI policies and positions

Event: Cross Canada tour on privatization, October 2003

For Sale?? Privatization of Essential Services Tour The “Private Interests vs. Public Goods” tour aims to bring Southern activists working on privatization issues at the local or national level to share their stories and strategies with Canadians facing the privatization of health care, education, energy, water and other public services.

Get a copy of "Empty Promises - The IMF, the World Bank, and the Planned Failures of Global Capitalism", which includes over 30 brief articles detailing everything you wanted to know about these two institutions.

 For press articles resulting from the tour go to the Media button on the navigation bar, to Press Responses to Structural Adjustment.

Privatization is no panacea - Globe and Mail

Now they tell us: Privatization is no panacea
By MADELAINE DROHAN
Wednesday, August 6, 2003 - Page A13
Finally, someone has come to their senses at the World Bank and admitted that letting the private sector run things does not always produce better results than leaving them in public hands.
For an organization that has spent two decades pushing privatization with something akin to religious zeal, this amounts to a crisis of faith.

Speech on the Role of IFIs in Privatization - Commonwealth Foundation

Commonwealth Foundation
Brunei Darasalaam
July 22nd, 2003

The Role of IFIs
Pamela Foster
Halifax Initiative Coalition

I may have been asked to give this talk as I, among our Commonwealth colleagues, sit closest to Washington. As there is so much experience in the room in addressing issues of the World Bank and the IMF[1], I will merely start a list of all the ways that the IFIs are implicated in the relentless drive towards privatization of public assets.

First, I would like to quickly share two contextual comments regarding this push towards privatization. It must be situated within the drive towards the end of history, or the ultimate global supremacy of US-modeled capitalism. This victory was declared at the end of the Cold War. The end of history envisions the role of the state being limited to maintaining law and order and a sound investment climate.

Submission to World Bank consultations on information disclosure - June 19, 2003

Disclosure Policy
Room U-11-003
World Bank
1818 H Street
Washington, DC, 20433
USA

Halifax Initiative submission to consultation on draft information disclosure policy

“Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest man you have seen. Ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? Then you will find your doubt melting away”.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Halifax Initiative Objectives for the World Bank June 5, 2003

Halifax Initiative Objectives for the World Bank

TO begin a transition from its role in financing conventional power loans to a new role in financing sustainable energy technologies the World Bank should :

CHANGE ENERGY POLICY:

1. Institute a Moratorium on Lending or Guarantees for any project that involves new exploration for fossil fuel reserves in natural forests, pristine and frontier areas.

2. Phase Out Lending and Guarantees for any World Bank project that involves coal and oil extraction.

3. Institute a Moratorium on Lending and Guarantees for fossil fuel power projects pending :

Evaluations of all current and future power projects in full consultation with the communities most affected by the project, respecting the right of the local populations to decline a project which may adversely impact them;

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - IFI policies and positions