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The World Bank and the IMF must seize their early chance in what could be a watershed year to end extreme global poverty by putting the battle against inequality, climate change and tax dodging at the very top of its Spring Meetings’ agenda this week. 

In response to IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath’s statement that the coronavirus pandemic will trigger the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression, Nadia Daar, Oxfam International’s Head of Washington DC Office said: "The IMF’s assessment is chilling. The human suffering behind those numbers is almost unimaginable. Oxfam’s research shows that coronavirus could push half a billion more people into poverty".

Oxfam's response to today’s announcement that Christine Lagarde is stepping down as Managing Director (MD) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), effective on September 12, 2019.

'In terms of a plan to reduce extreme income inequality, we are left empty handed. There has been a lot of talk and a raw sketch of plan of action in the communique, but it’s just a drop in the bucket.”

An important International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiative to shore up poor people in the Global South from the worst effects of its own austerity measures and the global economic crisis is in tatters.

Oxfam applauds the World Bank's new strategy to halve extreme poverty by 2020 and end it by 2030, but swift action is now needed to bring the strategy to life.

“At the start of the week, we urged the Bank to show it’s serious about ‘“ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity”’ in discussions on additional funding. We’re pleased to see them recommit to this, but it’s now up to the Bank’s programming to put its money where its mouth is," said Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam International's Washington office. 

The International Monetary Fund’s advice to countries promotes policies that fail to reduce inequality and may even increase it, according to Oxfam research. This advice clashes with what their own research shows countries should do to reduce inequality.

A global coalition of campaigners have called for an open process to elect the next Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and an end to the stranglehold that Europeans have had on the post since it was created.

84 percent of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) COVID-19 loans encourage, and in some cases require, poor countries hard hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic to adopt more tough austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis, warned Oxfam today.