Under the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility’s three year arrangement, Côte d’Ivoire is to be relieved of its external public debt worth US$615.9 million. Another US$8 million for interim assistance has been approved under the HIPC Initiative. This decision should help Côte d’Ivoire implement its reforms plan while recovering from recent social and political unrest and economic decline, and reach the Completion Point of the enhanced HIPC initiative. Details and background are available in the IMF press release.

DFI participated at the Development Cooperation Forum meeting in Luxembourg, speaking on the need for strong global mutual accountability mechanisms on development cooperation, without which developing countries cannot hold donors accountable. DFI's presentation is available here. For the conference programme and other papers (mainly on the role of aid in catalysing microfinance, investment and tax revenue) click here. 

A Debt Sustainability Workshop was held in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The objective of the workshop was to enhance capacity in debt sustainability for staff from the Public Debt Department, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Budget, and the Central Bank. About thirty staff were trained using the methodology developed by the World Bank and the IMF (Debt Sustainability Framework for Low Income Countries) in order to draft the country's debt sustainability report.

Two DFI experts have conducted their final two missions in Guinea in keeping with the national capacity building programme in aid management, and audit and control. After launching a training programme for Ministry of Finance executives and public investment experts, the consultants are now finalising a national manual of procedures for the management and control of public investment projects.

DSAs results are available on the IMF site. The results for Benin, Cameroon, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao, Liberia, Mauritania, Moldova, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Senegal, Tajikistan and Tanzania are similar to those of the previous DSA. Ghana and Togo have improved and Cote d'Ivoire and Republic of Congo have worsened their status. The results for Zimbabwe show that the country is in debt distress.

DFI helped to facilitate a technical meeting of Commonwealth and OIF country and secretariat officials, held at Wilton Park in the UK, to raise awareness and discuss the practicalities of various types of innovative financing instruments and mechanisms. DFI gave a presentation on public revenue-raising measures such as Financial Transaction Taxes and taxes on aviation and shipping fuels. The meeting followed the recent Commonwealth and OIF Finance Ministers' meetings which discussed these issues (see 22 September).

A workshop organised at the BWI Annual Meetings agreed on the creation of a network to monitor and analyse the Financial Stability Board (FSB Watch Network) to complement the FSB Watch website. Various participants including DFI agreed to mobilise key stakeholder groups (governments, UN agencies, trade unions, CSOs, expert researchers) to support the network, which will operate in coalition with networks already working on key issues (governance, transparency, commodity speculation, tax havens, bank regulation, debt workouts). The workshop was part of the joint AERC-Brookings-DFI-New Rules project on FSB funded by the Ford, C.S. Mott and Connect US Foundations.

An independent high-level panel composed of experts from developed and developing countries, and hosted at the Brookings Institution, launched a report demanding improvements in the governance of the Financial Stability Board. These included clarification of its legal status; greater transparency, accountability and disclosure; and stronger representation of developing countries. The panel was supported financially by the joint AERC-Brookings-DFI-New Rules project on FSB funded by the Ford and Connect US Foundations. At the meeting to launch the report, the FSB Secretary General welcomed the recommendations as a valuable input to the FSB's own report on governance which will be presented to the G20 Summit in November.

At the height of the international financial crisis and following the G-20 London Summit in 2009, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) was established to formulate and oversee the implementation of regulatory, supervisory and other financial sector policies. Despite its importance, there is extremely limited knowledge as to how it operates or is governed. DFI has worked with the Brookings Institution, New Rules for Global Finance, and the African Economic Research Consortium to establish the FSB Watch website that examines and promotes efforts towards an effective, inclusive, transparent and accountable global regulation of the financial system.

OIF Ministers meeting in Washington issued a strongly worded communiqué urging that the forthcoming Financial Transaction Tax be used to fund global development and the fight against climate change, and that as many G20 members and other countries as possible should adopt an FTT. They also made strong recommendations on debt workout procedures, and on the need to strengthen representation of low-income countries in the Financial Stability Board. To see the communiqué, click here. Elsewhere in the meetings, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and the Gates Foundation also declared their support for an FTT, adding momentum to its forthcoming adoption.