Zoellick and Strauss-Kahn React to Unions’ Demands on Growing Global Employment Crisis

from ITUC-CSI

Washington, 18 January 2009 (ITUC OnLine):  Commitments to strengthen social programmes for workers hit by the economic crisis and to increase action on core labour standards were made by World Bank President Robert Zoellick and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the conclusion today of two days of meetings with an 85-member international trade union delegation led by the President and General Secretary of the ITUC, General Secretaries of Global Union Federations and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, and leaders of national trade union organisations from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

WB to protect poor from market turmoil

from The Philippine Star

WASHINGTON – The World Bank agreed Sunday to help developing countries strengthen their economies, bolster their financial systems and protect the poor against the financial turmoil in international markets.

Robert Zoellick, the bank’s president, said the contagion affecting the global economy “has been a man-made catastrophe and responses to overcome it lie in all our hands.”

ILO Director-General calls for urgent measures to address “grave consequences” of global financial crisis

from ILO Press release

WASHINGTON (ILO News) ? The Director-General of the International Labour Office, Juan Somavia, has called for a series of urgent and coordinated financial, social, regulatory and development measures to avert a slide into recession and address the “grave” consequences of the global financial crisis (http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/dgo/speeches/somavia/2008/imfc.pdf).

IMF lowers GDP growth outlook for Philippines

by Maricel E. Burgonio
from The Manila Times

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised downward its economic-growth forecast for the Philippines for 2008 and further lowered it for 2009, adding that the US financial turmoil would further decelerate economic activities in the Philippines.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook update projected the growth of the Philippines’ gross domestic product (GDP) at 4.4 percent this year, from the July forecast of 5.2 percent. Such growth is the lowest among the Philippines and four other member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. But the forecast is within government’s lower-end GDP growth forecast of 4.4 percent to 4.9 percent for 2008.

Trade Unions Demand Effective Responses from the IMF and World Bank to Worsening Financial and Food Crises

from ITUC OnLine

Brussels, 05 October 2008 (ITUC OnLine): With the spreading financial crisis likely to take centre stage at the upcoming annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington on 11-13 October, the global trade

union movement is urging the international financial institutions (IFIs) not to overlook the millions of low-income workers whose buying power has declined drastically because of food and fuel price hikes. By the World Bank’s estimate, the price surges will add 100 million to the number of extreme poor in the world, which the Bank recently adjusted upward to 1.4 billion before the food and financial crises.

ADB Issues Second Draft Safeguard Policy Statement for Public Comment

from ADB

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has issued the second draft of its Safeguard Policy Statement, which pulls together currently separate policies on involuntary resettlement, indigenous peoples, and the environment.

The second draft of the policy statement has been posted on ADB’s website from today for a 60-day public comment period. It will be available for comment until Thursday, 4 December 2008.

Sacked Napocor Employees Entitled to Separation Pay, Backwages

by Arcie M. Sercado
from SC Public Information Office

National Power Corporation (NPC) employees, who were illegally terminated to give way to the re-organization of the corporation in 2002, are entitled to separation pay, backwages, wage adjustments, and other benefits accruing from January 31, 2003 to the date of payment under a validly approved Separation Program.

(Blacklisting due to rigged RP contract) World Bank bars Korean firm

by Darwin G. Amojelar
from The Manila Times

THE World Bank has barred a Korean company from securing any contract in the next four years for “rigging” bids involving a Philippine road project.

“Through an in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of the procurement process that the firm [Donsung Construction Co. Ltd. ] participated in as well as numerous interviews, investigators uncovered evidence of Dongsung’s involvement in widespread bid-rigging,” the Washington-based lender said in a statement.

IMF ripe for shakeup, Paul Martin says Former PM says credit crisis shows richer nations lack moral authority to guide world economy unchallenged

by Kevin Carmichael
from Globe and Mail

WATERLOO, ONT. — The credit crisis will spark a long-awaited overhaul of the International Monetary Fund by forcing nations such as the United States and Britain to acknowledge they lack moral authority to guide the world economy unchallenged, former prime minister Paul Martin predicts.

Richer countries, especially those in Europe, have jealously guarded their controlling stake in the Washington-based IMF, even as emerging markets such as China and India have become bigger players in the global economy.

IMF to review RP rice problem, fiscal plan

by Iris C. Gonzales
from The Philippine Star

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be sending a review team to check on the country’s rice crisis as well as the government’s fiscal reform program.

The visit, which is scheduled on June 16 to 20, will be the third for the IMF since the Philippines had been out of the multilateral lender’s post-program monitoring starting April 2007.