"A statement from thirty-nine organisations and regional networks from fifteen African countries agreed at a meeting in Kampala, Uganda, in May that PRSPs were simply window-dressing to improve the IMF and World Bank’s declining legitimacy. The content of PRSPs continues to put corporate rights before social, human and environmental rights. Rather than enable local people to decide their content, PRSPs meant more IMF and World Bank control "not only over financial and economic policies but over every aspect and detail of all our national policies and programmes", said the statement. In particular, the participants noted that the macroeconomic programme was still not open for discussion, and that "anti-poverty programmes are expected to be consistent with the neo-liberal paradigm including privatisation, deregulation, budgetary constraints and trade and financial liberalisation. Yet these ignore the role of international/global factors and forces in creating economic crises and poverty.""

"It is good news that the G8 recognised their responsibility and the need for decisive action, but shameful that they did not deliver any. Despite the world economic slowdown, the recent financial crises and the gap between rich and poor, the G8’s approach remains the same. The G8 continue to believe that extending neo-liberalism and tweaking the current system, offer the best way forward

The G8 suggested that the debt relief initiative is progressing well – all that needs to happen is to continue along this path. The G8 leaders referred to progress, but WDM believes that this has been too slow. Of the $100billion of debt stock cancellation offered at the Cologne G8 Summit in 1999, only $2.6 billion has been cancelled in the last two years. Analysis by the World Bank shows that the HIPC Initiative does not deliver a lasting exit from unsustainable debt. Even after receiving debt relief sixteen countries still have to spend larger amounts on debt service than on health and education. WDM is also concerned that the liberalisation and privatisation policies demanded in exchange for debt relief are a continuation of the structural adjustment policies that hurt, rather than helped, the poor in the past.

The G8’s collective aid to the developing world is declining. The G8 said nothing about extra funding to reverse the decline in their aid, nor about time scales for rich countries to reach the UN target of 0.7% GNP devoted to aid. WDM welcomes the untying of aid, but again regrets that the G8 set no timetable for implementation."

"In the face of some 1.2 billion people living in abject poverty on less than $1 a day, international organizations (mainly IMF, World Bank and WTO) and government leaders continue to focus on economic growth as the most effective way to reduce poverty. With official development assistance (ODA) in 2000 still below 1995 levels (last year, the average donor country provided only 0.24 percent of its gross national product in foreign aid), trade and financial liberalization - both domestic financial and capital account liberalization (CAL) - are touted as the "inevitable"(IMF economic counselor Michael Mussa) prerequisite for developing countries to partake in the open world economic system and to achieve poverty alleviation through economic growth."

"…the discussion centered on the question whether CAL supports or restrains other policies aimed specifically at reducing poverty (f. ex. by prohibiting developing country governments from using pro-poor spending)…"

"the shortfall of government revenues created by CAL needs to be accounted for, especially since financial liberalization, according to several UNDP studies, has failed to deliver on the promise of contributing to higher economic growth rates, which could have contributed to increased government revenues. On the contrary, because CAL demands strict market discipline with an inherent deflationary bias, governments in effect have to slow down growth, so that potential growth benefits of CAL can only be realised in the short-term."

"…CAL in the short-run constitutes a source of wage inequality (with the wages of skilled labor, which compliments capital, rising faster than those of unskilled labor, thus widening the income gap). Therefore, attention has to be given to the question of how to broaden access to capital in order to reach a "complementarity between human and physical capital."

"(Is it the case that) capital account liberalisation is to some extent unavoidable if countries have liberalised trade accounts, since with liberalised trade accounts money can be easily transferred abroad? Therefore, maybe the appropriate discussion about the connection between CAL and poverty has to centre more on the question of how far and how fast capital accounts should be liberalised as well as the question of how to ensure that countries benefit equally and evenly."

"Krishna Srinivasan from the IMF suggested that the possible loss of government revenue after implementing CAL would be offset by efficiency gains… He commented that tax holidays had little impact on foreign direct investments (FDI) and that the IMF did not support them… ODA as well as private capital flows are pro-cyclical, confounding the dilemma for developing countries in need of foreign capital. ... While the private capital flows to developing countries have increased, most of the money goes to only a few countries and within those countries mostly to financial institutions with a "frightening maturity structure" of less than one year of most bank flows."

"Tim Kessler from the Initiative for Policy Dialogue pointed out that capital flows will only benefit the poor if they go to the disadvantaged in the form of direct loans. This is particularly important since pro-poor sectors of a national economy, for example agriculture usually don’t attract foreign investment. However, schemes to direct credit are often hampered by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and private foreign capital"