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Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

At the close of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings in Washington, Chris Stalker, Acting Head of Oxfam International’s Washington office, commented on the week's developments.

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. 

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.

In an open letter, a large coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions, including Oxfam, is asking European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for a more ambitious proposal on tax transparency.

Fair tax regimes are vital to finance well-functioning states and to enable governments to uphold citizens’ rights to basic services, such as healthcare and education.

Fighting inequality is not just an issue of fairness but an economic necessity. That’s not Oxfam speaking, but the International Monetary Fund today. 

Luc Lamprière, spokesperson for Oxfam said:

Income inequality is high or increasing in 60 percent (64 out of 106) of low- and middle-income countries receiving grants or loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, reveals new Oxfam analysis ahead of the 2024 Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. Countries with high levels of income inequality have Gini coefficients above 0.4, the warning level set by the United Nations.

EU finance ministers have decided today to remove eight countries from the EU’s blacklist for tax havens, rushing to take countries off the blacklist without it being clear what they have actually committed to improve.