The 2026 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group that completed in Bangkok, Thailand from 12 to 18 October, brought together over 15,000 participants from 191 member countries including policymakers, central bankers, ministers of finance and development, private sector executives, civil society representatives, journalists, and academics to discuss the state of the global economy and issues of international concern, such as the growth outlook, financial stability, rising inequality and poverty reduction.
The Thai hosts welcomed participants with remarkable hospitality and efficiency despite the conditions under which dissent was permitted. Hundreds of local demonstrators marched near the National Convention Centre, protesting land rights impacts, carbon pricing models, and policies perceived to u foreign capital over local livelihoods. Some made a strong case for a more fundamental reckoning: ‘Why Thailand Should Be Suing, Not Hosting the IMF.’ The question was not rhetorical. It pointed to the land displacements, the conditionalities, and the structural adjustment legacies that have shaped Thailand’s own experience with the Bretton Woods institutions, and to the uncomfortable irony of a nation hosting the very architects of policies it has spent decades contesting.
The local protests reflected the wishes of many participants who were keen to see meaningful reforms to the International Financial Institutions that would place the wellbeing of people and the environment over returns on wealth and capital.
The status quo
Whilst multiple global issues require urgent action, cooperation was lacking at the event and reflected the geopolitically fragmented world. As the US pushes back on climate financing, points fingers at the ‘distorted policies’ of other countries, and fights a war of choice, it produces the energy crunch and negative consequences. IMF and the World Bank could and should have discussed the impact of these actions in a more insightful and meaningful manner.
There was little self-reflection by the multilateral institutions on the policies and strategies that have contributed to the debt and economic crises facing many nations. The Debt Report 2026 (Broad Global South) published by Erlassjahr, a German think-tank, identified 44 countries in the Global South suffering from a ‘very high foreign debt burden,’ with another 25 heavily burdened and 15 at latent risk.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the answer to almost every question on growth posed to the Bretton Woods institutions, even as they sidestepped the structural failures such as debt, austerity, and the chronic underfunding of public goods, that define the actual constraints on growth in the Global South. More than a dozen official panel discussions addressed AI, including one titled ‘What would it take? Making Private Capital and AI Work for Countries’. Another panel featured Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, as keynote speaker. This came in the same week that the Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy published an essay titled ‘Apocalypse Now and Then’, on the dangers of AI driving inequality, in which she writes: ‘It feels a little like that moment before the tsunami in 2004. Remember how, in Thailand and Indonesia, the ocean drew back from the coastline? People ran out to marvel at the miles of pristine new beach that suddenly emerged, not realising that, far out at sea, a wall of water was building up and would come crashing over them. We’re in that moment now. A towering wall of stupidity is about to inundate us.’
Benefits for the few
Private capital took centre stage at the World Bank Group, which claimed $112 billion was mobilised during fiscal year 2026 while offering no evidence on the number or quality of jobs created.
Warnings of record debt were met with more fiscal consolidation, tight monetary stances for price stability, supply-side and structural reforms, and inflation targeting through central bank policies from the IMF rather than replenishing its Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, Resilience and Sustainability Trust, and Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust to ramp up much-needed financing. It is disappointing that the international financial institutions have not been able to effectively replenish these specialised trust funds and financing vehicles managed by the IMF to support low-income and vulnerable economies.
Help for the many
Some global south governments, civil society, and think tanks, including Sri Lanka’s Institute of Political Economy, called for a different order of priorities, as many countries carry high debt-servicing obligations, poor public services, and lack access to adequate energy or water. They called for sufficient and predictable public finance to invest in health, education, energy, and food sovereignty. They raised the need for policy space to promote green industrial policies and to build the foundation for decent jobs for all.
The most important conversations happened outside the official meetings. From the Borrowers’ Platform to coordinate on debt and financial architecture, the Xingu Talks for aligning global finance flows, the Southern Caucus on sovereign industrialisation, the Feminist Festival of Resistance and Alternatives making a compelling case for a gender-just economy, and the International Peoples Assembly mobilising for economic, social, and climate justice, Global South governments and movements were building their own alternatives.
Their focus was policy sovereignty and a people-centred economy that values care and develops within planetary boundaries. These conversations reminded participants that alternatives are not only possible; they are already being imagined and built. There were calls for more grants and less debt, simple access, and faster disbursement.
The serious issues facing Sri Lanka’s economy and its people as a result of the unjust global economic order echo what is being raised across the Global South. There is an urgent need for the Government and civil society organisations to show solidarity by uniting and joining forces with other nations and activists to drive reforms within the international financial institutions, through active participation in the UNCTAD Borrowers’ Platform and the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, and by supporting the International Panel on Inequality, among other initiatives
Where are the alternatives?
Global debt and development campaigners such as Debt Justice UK, EuroDad, LatinDadd, Asia Peoples Movement for Debt and Development, AfroDad, Bretton Woods Project, MenaFem, IDEAs, Suramericana Vision, YukthiLk and numerous others, posed questions for finance policymakers.
How can governments deal with the costs of today whilst protecting their ability to invest in tomorrow, at a time of limited fiscal space, high debt costs, energy and commodity price shocks, and the need to continue investing in health, education, climate resilience, and energy transition? How can debt governance incorporate external fiscal risks that affect debt sustainability but exist outside public borrowing? How can a new global standard on tax expenditure reporting, a vital step towards freeing up fiscal space, be introduced? And how can countries finance adaptation without worsening debt distress, external vulnerabilities, and pressures on essential public services?
Local alternatives
The serious issues facing Sri Lanka’s economy and its people as a result of the unjust global economic order echo what is being raised across the Global South. There is an urgent need for the Government and civil society organisations to show solidarity by uniting and joining forces with other nations and activists to drive reforms within the international financial institutions, through active participation in the UNCTAD Borrowers’ Platform and the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, and by supporting the International Panel on Inequality, among other initiatives.
The institutions that govern the global economy are structurally rigged against the South. Unilateral resistance is punished; collective action is shielded. Unity also means building alternatives, not merely demanding seats at a table that was never designed for them but sharing the vast resources of technical expertise, policy solutions and collective experience available to drive essential changes to a world that rewards capital controlled by a few, over the work of the many.