As the IMF and World Bank held their annual meetings in Washington, DC, hundreds of activists marched on Oct. 16 to Mendiola Bridge, demanding “Stop the harm! Cancel the Debt! Reparations and Just Transition Now.”
They joined CSOs and movements in at least 50 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a Global Day of Coordinated Mobilizations, holding the IMF, World Bank, and G7 countries accountable for the debt, economic, and climate crisis.
The demonstration brought together campaigners and activists from Oriang National Women’s Movement, Kilusan para sa Kabuhayan Kalusugan Kalikasan at Katiyakam sa Paninirahan, Sanlakas, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice. Aniban ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura, Freedom from Debt Coalition, Zone One Tondo Organization, and the regional Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
The mobilization called out corruption as a systemic problem, requiring systemic solutions. It also highlights shared demands for debt cancellation and an end to austerity loan conditions, which are pushed especially upon cash-strapped countries in the Global South, stopping fossil-fuel lending, providing grants-based climate finance, payment of reparations for historical and continuing destruction, and for a Just Transition.
Asia and other regions of the Global South report unprecedented public debt levels and mounting debt servicing costs. According to UNCTAD, the public debt of developing countries swelled twice as fast as that of Global North economies since 2010, reaching $31 trillion by 2024. High interest costs saw $921 billion in interest payments alone in 2024. South and Southeast Asian countries, such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines, saw public and publicly guaranteed foreign debts rising to more than half of their total external debt in 2023.
Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, said, “The IMF and the World Bank remain key actors of the G7, the world’s richest countries, in worsening the climate and debt catastrophes. It is high time for these institutions to stop peddling more debts as solutions to crises, including the climate emergency caused by rich countries, and imposing their neoliberal policies and conditionalities of privatization and trade liberalization that violate people’s rights and intensify the climate emergency, while ensuring massive profits for big business.”
On the continued rise in borrowings, Dr. Rene Ofreneo, President, Freedom from Debt Coalition (Philippines) said: “The Philippines is currently wracked by issues of corruption with losses to the public purse estimated at an astounding PhP3 trillion. At the same time, we are seeing outstanding external debt rising again in the first quarter of 2025, reaching US$146.74 billion. These conditions are rightly fueling public outrage, for while more Filipinos are falling into poverty and suffering more devastating impacts of climate change, our political and economic system has allowed this greed-driven collusion between private business and government to take root and fester.
“Unless this system is transformed, away from neoliberal models peddled by the IMF, World Bank, and the G7, we will neither be free of the scourge of corruption nor the enslaving conditions of debt dependence. We are already on a dangerous trajectory of rising debt accumulation that will surely be propelled by the loss of financial resources due to corruption.”
Atty. Luke Espiritu, President of Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP), scored how international financial institutions have supported political dynasties compliant with their neoliberal interests and directions.
“The poor, especially the workers, have long been victimized by the IMF-World Bank through its policies that promote inequality and increased poverty. These financial institutions are stewards of the neo-liberal system that only enriched the Global North at the expense of the people in the Global South. Let us not forget that the IMF, the World Bank, and the G7, particularly the US, play significant roles in nurturing political dynasties compliant with their dictates. We need to transform this greed and profit-driven economic and financial systems and structures being sustained and promoted by the IMF-World Bank and create a system that is sustainable, gender-just, and equitable.”
Flora Asidao-Santos, Chairperson of Oriang National Women’s Movement, pointed out the adverse impacts of loan conditionalities on women, and informal women workers in particular.
“The IMF and World Bank have widened inequality by promoting regressive VAT as a condition for loans, which unfairly burdens the poor, especially women. VAT taxes everyone, but those from lower-income groups carry the burden of higher taxes, making it an unjust imposition. In the Philippines, VAT has increased the costs of essential goods, making it hard for ordinary citizens, especially women in the informal sector, to access food, healthcare, medicines, and other essentials,” she said.
“Millions of people around the world are falling deeper into poverty due to the programs and policy prescriptions of the IMF, World Bank, and the G7 countries that own and dominate them,” added Manjette Lopez, President of Sanlakas.
“The Philippines is a clear example of how its lending practices have shaped our economic and political system into one that breeds the staggering scale of corruption we see today and enables the use of governance as a tool to amass private gain. Corruption is but the visible tip of deeply embedded systemic and structural fault lines that we must urgently address.”
Photo: Jimmy Domingo/Mata: Asia Press Photo
