IMF Fails to Agree on Key Meeting Communique

The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), the IMF policymaking body, failed to issue it's yearly communique during the IMF and World Bank meetings. Instead, the chair of the IMFC issued a separate statement. The IMFC met on COVID response and recovery, the impacts of the Ukraine war on the global economy, food prices, inflation, debt crises and climate.

Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network and a United nations finance expert who monitored G20 meetings since 2010, releases the following statement on the IMFC meeting, IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings:

"Another casualty of the Ukraine war is that world leaders can't fully focus on pandemic response, inflation, climate change and rising poverty rates.

"Before the shocks from the Ukraine war, developing countries faced a series of crises. The war in Ukraine makes a terrible situation even worse.

"The IMF reports that the shock of the Ukraine war threatens a fragile COVID recovery.

"In more than 100 countries that are not on track to vaccinate 70% of their population, the pandemic is far from over.

"The meetings failed to make progress on access to vaccines, tests and treatments in the poorest countries.

"The war compounds pandemic supply chain shocks and fuels further inflation.

"Amidst ongoing health and economic impacts of COVID, developing countries now have little room to protect their most vulnerable from rising food prices.

"With growing food crises, we are worried about social unrest which could destabilize some countries.

"We expect rising interest rates and the repercussions of the Ukraine war to make more countries unable to service their debts.

"As shocks mount, the number of countries facing debt defaults keeps rising.

"We needed the G20 to urgently agree on ways to fix the shortcomings of their debt reduction process.

"The IMF and World Bank leadership put forward valuable and practical proposals for G20 Common Framework reform before these meetings, but we do not see decisions on them.

"The IMF approved the Resilience and Sustainability Trust to provide climate and pandemic preparedness in vulnerable countries.

"Wealthy countries need to fully fund the new IMF trust.

"Energy and food security concerns could derail the urgent action needed to halt climate change."