News stories by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, page 8

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 13 (IPS) - Much higher interest rates – due to Western central banks – are suffocating developing nations, especially the poorest, causing prolonged debt distress and economic stagnation.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Mar 06 (IPS) - Viable, popular national economic alternatives require conditions to help build and sustain them. An independent, accountable government can ensure supportive institutions, including laws.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 28 (IPS) - As dire economic predictions for 2023 did not materialise, pundits began 2024 far more optimistically. But policy ghosts from the last half-century will likely undermine such wishful thinking.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 19 (IPS) - Imperialism continues to dominate the world. Globalisation is losing to some of its anti-theses, but imperialism still rules, increasingly by law, albeit in changing even contradictory ways.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 14 (IPS) - A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 07 (IPS) - Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in international trade and investment agreements – long abused by opportunists with means – are slowly being rejected by cautious governments.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 31 (IPS) - Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 24 (IPS) - At high cost and with dubious efficiency, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have increased private profits at the public expense. PPPs have proved costly in financing public projects.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 17 (IPS) - World Bank aid encourages governments to enable illicit financial outflows to offshore tax havens by reducing capital controls, thus draining precious foreign exchange and government resources.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 20 (IPS) - The World Bank insists commercial finance is necessary for achieving economic recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but does little to ensure profit-hungry commercial finance serves the public interest.

By failing to address pressing challenges within their purview, the second-ever Bretton Woods institutions’ (BWIs) annual meetings on the African continent, in Marrakech in October 2023, set the developing world even further back.