Jubilee USA-IMF Working Group 2014-15 The Oxfam Novib contribution to Jubilee US is focused on enabling Jubilee US to initiate a targeted campaign for increased transparency and accountability at the IMF, and to undertake a number of interventions to counter IMF austerity policies that lead to reduced social sector budgets.  In terms of policy and practice changes, Jubilee US will contribute to the following outcomes:

1)	GreaterIMF Accountability and Transparency:

In contrast to the World Bank and regional multilateral development banks, where civil society has succeeded over the last few years in improving disclosure policies, leading to greater transparency and accountability by those institutions, the IMF remains far behind, with many of its crucial and far-reaching policy documents, (such as the side letters to loan agreements) classified as secret.  The deliberations of the IMF Board of Directors are not public, depriving interested parties of important information they need in holding their representatives accountable and in designing appropriate policy measures andpolitical responses to the IMF.  The IMF itself states that transparency in economic policy and the availability of reliable data on economic and financial developments is critical for sound decision-making and for the smooth functioning of an economy .  It also affirms that it views transparency as a critical support for its objectives of promoting global economic and financial stability,by stimulating public discussion of economic policies, and facilitating orderly and efficient functioning of financial markets .

However, the IMFs current Transparency Policy, which underwent a review process in 2013, fails to make the data and the entire set of recommendations regarding country grants publicly available.  The IMF boards failure to include opening up to public scrutiny its own deliberations and decision-making on lending was by far the most disappointing aspect of the review process.  The IMFs role as guarantor of global financial stability, with the responsibility that entails towards markets, has to date justified the classification of particularly crucial information as confidential .  The next review of the IMFs Transparency Policy is scheduled to take place no later than 2018.

Jubilee US plans to launch a campaign calling for greater transparency and accountability of the IMF, given the far-reaching effects of its decisions and conditions for countries receiving its loans, and for poor people the world over.  The campaign will call for the adoption of a new policy that that presumes disclosure of documents.  The intended campaign will focusits asks in the initial phase on win[ning] release of ED minutes from meetings, creating public vehicles to monitor IMF debt restructuring, [and to] televise or web stream annual IMF meetings.

The campaign for increased IMF transparency and accountability willalso involve concrete links to Jubilee USs engagement in the debt restructuring processes of highly indebted Caribbean and South Pacific small islands, following the success of such an intervention in Granada.  Jubilee US describes this target as winning precedents on accountability and transparency that can influence future debt restructurings.  This will include procuring access of IMF debt sustainability analysis, internal documents, contracts and ensuring the involvement of civil society in the restructuring process.

The campaign is envisaged as multi-year, building up momentum as the date for the scheduled policy review in 2018 approaches.

2)	Protection of Social Budgets in LICs (Low-Income Countries):

The second major outcome that the work of Jubilee US will contributeto is the protection of social budgets, especially in LICs. Jubilee US is seeking to bring about explicit changes in IMF monetary and fiscal policies in all low-income countries to ensure these nations have sufficient fiscal and monetary space to invest in the needs of the poorest. will work towards such an outcome through:

-	Publication of a report in 2014 on the IMF Debt Sustainability Framework, and using the report to influence the US government and the G20 to shift this framework to support LICs.
-	Advocate and lobby selected IMF Executive Directors (EDs) to pass the threshold of ED votes needed to implement multi-year 0 percent interest rates in the Poverty Reduction Growth Trust for LICs


3)	Linking IMF-cantered work to tax justice advocacy:

Jubilee US will contribute to the higher global visibility and relevance of tax justice advocacy by linking its concrete engagement with heavily-indebted islands, as a stakeholder involved in the negotiations for the cancellation and restructuring of their debt, to investigations of tax avoidance in those very same islands.

Jubilee US was significantly involved, as an advisor to civil society and church groups, in the recent negotiations for debt restructuring in Granada, and is building on that experience to expand its direct engagement in further negotiations in other Caribbean islands, directly and as advisor to civil society and government.  The IMF had acknowledged specificities of the Caribbean economy in a report titled Caribbean Small States: Challenges of High Debt and Low Growth, which highlighted the unique economic problems faced by the Caribbean, particularly with respect to low growth, high debt, significant vulnerabilities, and limited resilience to shocks.  In its continued engagement with those small islands, Jubilee plans to investigate tax avoidance in those islands as a potential major factor behind the crisis of those countries.  This is especially important in the lightof the continued crisis in the Caribbean and the creditors reluctance to cater for the protection of social budgets.

4)	Stronger civil society collaboration and networking on IMF issues:

As a Washington-based organisation which has built a strong track record in the US, with US legislators, and with the IMF, and as a convening organisation facilitating civil society networking on IMF issues, a third important outcome that Jubilee US will contribute to is stronger civil society collaboration and networking on IMF issues.  This ability to play a convening and facilitating role of the informal DC-based IMF Working Group, and of other civil society (adhoc and more structured) collaborations, particularly around specific campaigns, IMF meetings, or significant political moments, was the main reason for our initial decision to support Jubilee US.

Jubilee US will continue playing such a role, contributing to thestrengthening of civil society collaboration on the IMF, including through the transparency campaign (Outcome 1).