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Created: 17 October 2016

Marking the beginning of new geopolitics in 2006, BRICS has managed to maintain its relevance on global matters. The BRICS coalition represents about 40 percent of the world’s population and 17 percent of world trade.

Troubled with widening inequality, each of the BRICS countries continue to lose revenue through tax evasion and avoidance practices. Global Financial Integrity reported that in 2013 alone, developing countries lost $1.1 trillion to illicit financial flows.

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) (or black money) are funds that are illegally earned, transferred and utilised and are exploited by corporates to move their profits to low tax jurisdictions (more popularly known as tax havens) requires concrete international and regional cooperation.

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Created: 10 October 2016

The South Centre recently published Research Paper No. 71: "Recovering Sovereignty Over Natural Resources: The Cases of Bolivia and Ecuador," authored by Humberto Campodonico.

This document analyzes the renegotiation process of oil and gas contracts in two Latin American countries, Bolivia and Ecuador, from 2003 to 2010 and the measures taken for sectorial policy reform in the hydrocarbon sector and our conclusions are that it has been favourable.

The challenge of transforming natural resource rich economies and moving away from heavy dependence on commodities is not a short-term process. In spite of the advances made by these economies, they still rely heavily on commodities, a process that will have bigger problems now that the super cycle of high commodity prices has come to an end.

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Created: 10 October 2016

The 2016 annual meetings in Washington took place in a context of continued slow world economic growth and trade, with the IMF and World Bank presenting themselves as the saviours of the economic order by supporting increased global trade. Given memories of the IMF and Bank’s push for trade and growth in the 80s and 90s, many were wondering ‘trade and growth for whom?’ Certainly the unquestioning belief that the private sector will discover its development mandate and become instrumental in ensuring the SDGs are achieved was alive and well in DC during the week. President Kim’s curt dismissal of community concerns at the town hall meeting seemed to validate concerns raised by staff throughout his first five-year term about his competence and indicate that the Bank will continue to push its agenda with little concern for the opinions of the communities it is mandated to serve.

Read more: Bretton Woods (WB and IMF) annual meetings: an analysis

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Created: 06 October 2016

On Wednesday 21st September 2016, we heard the apparently joyous news that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and World Bank had launched the Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection which “aims to make pensions, maternity, disability and child benefits, among others, available to all persons.” Does this send hope to developing countries that the World Bank is changing its approach to social protection, dropping its support for low budget, poverty targeted social assistance schemes and, instead, embracing inclusive lifecycle social protection while committing to realising the right to social security for all?

On Thursday 29th September 2016, we had our answer. In an article for the Guardian, Jim Yong Kim, the President of the World Bank, exhorted developing countries to implement conditional cash transfers (CCTs), the antithesis of universal social protection. CCTs target households living in poverty – rather than all persons – and, by using poor quality targeting methodologies such as the proxy means test, exclude the majority of their intended beneficiaries, while often causing division and conflict within communities. For example, Mexico’s famous Oportunidades programme has been found to have exclusion errors of around 70%, while the World Bank itself estimated exclusion errors of 93% in Indonesia’s Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) CCT (Alatas et al 2014). And, as we should all know by now, there is no robust evidence on the value of implementing conditions, since all positive impacts on beneficiaries appear to come from the cash they receive (see this paper for further discussion).

Since CCTs are the World Bank’s social protection programme of choice, perhaps Jim Yong Kim was just showing consideration for his own staff. World Bank staff claim that their institution cannot give loans for unconditional programmes so entitlement schemes for all persons do not fit their business model. The last time the World Bank announced its support for universal social protection – in 2015 – we expressed our concern about the danger of unemployment for the World Bank’s social protection team and the need to provide them with a safety net (see blog by Nick Freeland). Kim’s support for CCTs is perhaps a signal that they are, in fact, in no immediate danger of losing their jobs. Indeed, like any good used car salesman, Kim used the Guardian interview to try and drum up business for his organisation: “We’re willing to provide financing for these conditional cash transfers,” he announced. There was no mention, though, of an offer to finance more effective, inclusive social protection schemes, of the type he appeared to agree with the ILO.

Read more: Universal social protection: the ILO attempt to persuade the World Bank