International Financial Institutions
13. Each autumn, the Boards of Governors of the World
Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) hold their
Annual Meetings to discuss a range of issues related to poverty
reduction, international economic development and finance. The
Committee, in turn, holds an annual evidence session to scrutinise
the outcomes of these meetings, which provides an opportunity
to explore the UK's relationships with the International Financial
Institutions (IFIs). The UK Government works very closely with
the IFIs, particularly the World Bank, spending a large proportion
of UK aid through them. This annual evidence session is one way
in which the Committee seeks to address the need for parliamentary
scrutiny of these relationships, in both developed and developing
countries.
14. As in 2004, the sessions in 2005 and 2006 continued
to include evidence from NGOs as well as from the Secretary of
State for International Development and DFID and Treasury officials.
In addition, in our 2005 session, we asked the Secretary of State
for International Development about the outcomes of the United
Nations World Summit of September 2005. The main purpose of the
Summit was to review progress since the Millennium Summit 2000,
and in particular towards reaching the MDGs, setting any necessary
mid-course corrections. The Summit was felt by many commentators
and NGOs to be a disappointment, particularly as, in the event,
there was no meaningful review of progress toward the MDGs.
15. During the 2005 evidence session
we explored a range of issues including;
debt relief, following on from the announcements at the G8 Gleneagles
Summit; conditionality and accountability, after the March 2005
publication of DFID's new conditionality paper; the politics of
development, and results, effectiveness and accountability following
controversial speeches from World Bank President Wolfowitz; IFI
governance and parliamentary scrutiny in the UK and developing
countries; equality, equity and development; trade policy and
aid-for-trade; climate change; extractive industries; and security
and development.[9]
16. Our evidence session in 2006
concentrated on issues which included:
the division of responsibility between the IMF and the World Bank;
governance of the IMF-how best to increase the voice of developing
countries; World Bank and IMF conditionality; the Bank's anti-corruption
framework; debt cancellation for 'illegitimate and odious' debt;
the Bank's Clean Energy Investment Framework; and the Bank's approach
to infrastructure.[10]
We also discussed at length the decision by the Government to
withhold some funds from the World Bank pending a more detailed
analysis of the progress it has made on reviewing its conditionality
policies. The Bank subsequently provided a more detailed report,
and indicated that it had reduced the number of conditions it
applies to loans and that it would seek to assure developing countries
that benchmarks were not the same as conditions. It was our view
that there should have been a debate on the floor of the House
on the relationship between the UK and the World Bank.
DFID White Paper
17. In July 2006, DFID launched its White Paper,
Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the poor,
which sets out what the UK Government aims to do to reduce world
poverty over the next five years.[11]
Without pre-empting the Private Sector Development (PSD) report,
published in July 2006, our response to the Paper's Consultation
Document outlined some preliminary observations on its PSD-related
content.[12] We highlighted
the need for the White Paper to put forward a coherent PSD policy,
and, on its publication, we were pleased to see that DFID had
taken this into account and had devoted a full chapter to PSD.
18. However, as we made clear in our PSD Report,
we were disappointed that the White Paper stopped a considerable
way short of setting out a clear and coherent PSD strategy, and
expressed our concern that "the impressive array of policies
and financing mechanisms set out in the White Paper remain just
that-a collection of initiatives that are not necessarily adequately
linked by a clear PSD strategy."[13]
Our later report on the humanitarian
response to natural disasters welcomed the focus on climate change
in the White Paper, but called on DFID to set out specific actions
and measurable targets to enable us to hold the Department to
account in the future on this area of its work.[14]
3 International Development Committee, Seventh Report
of Session 2002-03, Trade and development at the WTO: Issues
for Cancún, HC 400; First Report of Session 2003-04,
Trade and development at the WTO: Learning the Lessons of Cancún
to revive a genuine development round, HC 92 Back
4
Two other members of the Committee also attended the conference
in their capacity as Inter-Parliamentary Union representatives Back
5
International Development Committee, Third Report of Session 2005-06,
The WTO Hong Kong Ministerial and the Doha Development Agenda,
HC 730-I Back
6
HC Deb, 12 October 2006, cols 145-82WH Back
7
International Development Committee, Sixth Report of Session 2004-05,
Fair Trade? The European Union's trade agreements with African,
Caribbean and Pacific Countries, HC 68 Back
8
HC Deb, 8 June 2006, cols 147-168WH Back
9
The Autumn Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank; and
the UN 2005 World Summit, Oral and Written Evidence, 18 October
2005, HC 569 Back
10
The Autumn Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, Oral
and Written Evidence, 19 October 2006, HC 1622-i Back
11
Eliminating world poverty: making governance work for the poor-A
White Paper on International Development, DFID, Cm 6876, July
2006 Back
12
Letter from the Chairman of the Committee to the Secretary of
State for International Development, 28 March 2006 [not published];
and Department for International Development, Eliminating World
Poverty: a consultation document, January 2006 Back
13
International Development Committee, Fourth Report of Session
2005-6, Private Sector Development, HC 921-1, para 213. Back
14
International Development Committee, Seventh Report of Session
2005-06, Humanitarian response to natural disasters, HC
1188-I, paras 183-184 Back
