Ghana: BWIs should leave development policy to experts, says former UNCTAD head

Dr Yilmaz Akyuz, former Chief Economist of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and currently Senior Research Fellow with the Third World Network, has recommended that the IMF should get out of development finance and return to its original mandate of short-term lending for countries in current account difficulty, according to an article from TWN's webiste. "On its part, the World Bank should become a proper bank again, relieved of its concessional lending window through which it has been able to exercise political influence over the affairs of developing countries." Speaking at a four day strategy meeting in Accra, Ghana, of eighty civil society organisations from across the world, Akyuz explained that the two institutions have strayed far away from their original mandates.