Today is Day 1 of the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington D.C. Finance ministers and central bank governors from 190 countries are in the building. The official agenda covers the global growth outlook, the Middle East shock, debt sustainability, and private sector mobilisation.
We have published two things this morning.
The first is a brief setting out seven questions the Spring Meetings should answer but won’t — on the Bank’s 40 percent project success rate, the IMF’s 81 years without a rating system, the Board that approves everything and is accountable for nothing, sovereign immunity, IFC at 11 percent in fragile states, the six departments responsible for jobs, and a billion dollars a year wasted in institutional duplication that 35 years of concordats have not resolved.
The second is an open letter to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva asking five specific questions about the $3.4 billion COVID emergency disbursement to Nigeria. The Accountant General was convicted in 2024. The IMF’s own Legal Department documented near-universal governance failures across 50 recipient countries. The repayment was collected in full. The receipts have not been checked. The IMF is this week discussing another $20–50 billion in emergency financing. The governance framework that will be applied is institutionally the same one that was applied in 2020.
Over the course of this week we will publish one open letter per day — to the IEO Director, to IFC CEO Makhtar Diop, to World Bank President Ajay Banga, to the Executive Boards of both institutions, and on Saturday to the Governors themselves. Six letters. Six named recipients. Thirty questions the Spring Meetings should be asked to answer.