Author: David Legge
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How do Taxes Drive the Sustainable Development Goals?
By Thomas Beloe and Ahtesham Khan in IPS, 7 May 2024 Tax revenue remains the most sustainable source of income for governments and plays a crucial role in financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It diminishes the need for international assistance and contributes to the repayment of burdensome debt, ultimately strengthening a country’s ability to withstand external shocks. In 2022,…
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Trade Liberalisation Kicked Away African Development Ladder
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram in IPS 8 May 2024 Africans have long been promised trade liberalisation would accelerate growth and structural transformation. Instead, it has cut its modest production capacities, industry and food security. Berg helped sink AfricaThe 1981 Berg Report was long the World Bank blueprint for African economic reform. Despite lacking support in theory and…
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Dissenting Voices at Nairobi Soil Health Forum Over Increased Fertilizer Use
By Isaiah Espisu in IPS, 9 May 2024 As the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit convened in Nairobi to review the progress made in terms of increasing fertilizer use in line with the 2006 Abuja Declaration, experts, practitioners, activists, and even government officials pointed out that accelerated fertilizer use may not be the magic…
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How rich-country government and World Bank funding to for-profit private hospitals causes harm, and why it should be stopped
By Anna Marriott, Oxfam International, 26 June 2023 Development finance institutions owned by European governments and the World Bank Group are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on expensive for-profit hospitals in the Global South that block patients from getting care, or bankrupt them, with some even imprisoning patients who cannot afford their bills. At…
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First, Do No Harm: Examining the impact of the IFC’s support to private healthcare in India
By Anjela Taneja and Amitabha Sarkar, Oxfam International, 26 June 2023 This report examines the support to private healthcare provision in India by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Despite supporting private healthcare in the country since 1997, no healthcare results for lending and investments have been disclosed since the…
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Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations
On 22 December 2023, the General Assembly adopted resolution 78/230, “Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations.” The resolution establishes an ad hoc intergovernmental Committee mandated to develop draft terms of reference for a United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation, with a view to finalizing the Committee’s work by August…
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Trade disputes over IP and health
Thanks to KEI for sharing the following references on trade related bullying. Time-line of Disputes over Compulsory Licensing and Parallel Importation in South Africa, 1994 to 1999. http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa-timeline.txt Susannah Markandya, Timeline of Trade Disputes involving Thailand and access to medicines, July 23, 2001 (Timeline entries from 1979 to 2001). http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/c/thailand/thailand.html Susannah Markandya, Timeline of disputes…
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The Collapse of Neoliberal Privatisation
By C P Chandreasekhar on IDEAs 19 April 2024 Thames Water, one of England’s many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing. Unable to mobilise £500 million from shareholders who have milked the company over years, Kemble…
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Africa’s Debt Crisis needs a Political Fix, contend experts
By Meera Srinivasan, on IDEAs, 20 April 2024 Ghana’s women vendors and hawkers are hard to miss. Attired in bright colours and bold prints, they walk swiftly on capital Accra’s streets, bearing baskets with various items on their heads, as infants wrapped in cloth carriers sit clasping their shoulders. As key contributors to the country’s…
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Austerity, Dispossession and Injustice: Facets of the debt crisis in Sri Lanka
By Ahilan Kadirgamar on IDEAS, 26 April 2024 Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt for the first time in its postcolonial history in April 2022. The International Monetary Fund (IMF)-led process of recovery that followed has not only been disastrous in terms of the economic policy package proposed by the Government. The underlying analysis…
