South Africa's National Treasury now proposes to reduce salaries. On the face of it this seems sensible. But the fundamental issue is the structure of the public service.
Central bank (in the background) can no longer perform its function of being the lender of last resort.
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Zimbabwe wants to issue a sovereign bond to raise $3.5 billion it has agreed to pay as compensation to white farmers, but the economic and political conditions aren't conducive to such an issuance.
IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva and World Bank group president David Malpass have offered debt relief to developing countries.
African countries should tread carefully over the debt relief offered by multilateral institutions and other lenders. It could prove very costly in the medium to long term.
People receiving food handouts in Lagos, Nigeria.
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A blanket solution to Africa's debt burden risks costing African countries dearly in terms of access to international capital markets and the relatively lower cost of borrowing.
South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago chairs the International Monetary Finance Committee.
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Small-scale fisheries buffer poverty and hunger in coastal countries.
A Pakistani man walks past a shop that was closed due to a recent strike in Peshawar, Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani businesses went on strike in a nationwide protest against an increased sales tax, which opposition political parties said was imposed as part of the International Monetary Fund’s recent $6 billion bailout package for Islamabad.
(AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)
Abolishing the secretive World Bank Tribunal known as the ISDS won't solve all of the problems of global economic governance. But it seems a very good place to start.
Ghana has, since independence in 1957, regularly turned to the IMF for financial assistance
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Ghana has completed yet another IMF financial assistance programme. Given its long history of living within its means and then blowing the budget again, will it be knocking on the IMF's doors soon?
Cholera vaccines have been given to people in Beira after an outbreak following Cyclone Idai.
EPA-EFE/Celeste Mac-Arthur