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For Immediate Release
Contact:

Anjoulie Woodhead, Communications and Outreach Director, anjoulie@jubileeusa.org

Jubilee USA Statement on IMF and World Bank Meetings and IMFC Press Briefing

IMF Fails to Reach Agreed Statement on Key Meeting

WASHINGTON

The International Monetary and Financial Committee, the IMF policymaking body, failed to issue its communique during the IMF and World Bank meetings. The IMFC met on the pandemic, Ukraine war, inflation, developing country debt, food security and climate crisis.

Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network and a United Nations finance expert who has monitored IMF meetings since 2010, releases the following statement on the IMFC meeting, IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings:

"A recession is looming.

"The sense of these meetings is that the worse is yet to come.

"We feel the fallout from Russia's war on Ukraine as the war is taking a toll on the global economy.

"World leaders are grappling with multiple intertwined challenges.

"The recession, high inflation, food and energy prices, the pandemic and climate crisis are all making the economy worse.

"As most countries missed the target of vaccinating 70% of their population, many countries see their health spending squeezed.

"Food inflation means that we can't protect the most vulnerable from going hungry.

"The IMF's Food Shock Window provides temporary and limited relief, but at the expense of more debt.

"With rising interest rates we expect to see more countries needing debt restructuring.

'We fail to see steps to make debt resolution processes more reliable.

"Lacking a predictable path for debt relief, indebted countries choose to postpone facing their debt problems.

"It is encouraging that the Resilience and Sustainability Trust is already taking Special Drawing Rights from rich countries to fund cheap climate and pandemic loans for vulnerable countries.

"The trust provides a model for wealthy countries to donate the Special Drawing Rights, that they don't need, to development banks."

Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.

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