The financing of long-term growth in developing countries has become more of a problem every year. In the following article one particular new financial instrument — Growth Participation Units — is discussed as a particular way to attract private sector long-term financing of development.

This article presents an outline of major international financial institutions, i.e. the Bretton Woods organisations. The focus of analysis is on the conceptions that have shaped the posture of these institutions on development issues and on their corresponding activities and problems.

In literature and practice the term “development bank” is commonly applied to investment banks for the financing of private projects which deserve to be promoted on general economic grounds. Their salient task is usually to provide medium- and long-term funds. Complementary consultative...

The lending criteria applied by the IMF and the World Bank have been converging for some time. Considering also that since the floating of exchange rates in the early seventies the IMF seems to have lost in importance as a monetary institution, debate is growing on the question of whether the...

Growth in Latin America in the 1980s was much slower than it had been in previous decades and real resource transfer has been negative since 1983. What are the chances that this situation will change in the nineties? Where can the necessary development finance come from? Can bottlenecks be avoided?

Islamic banking, where fixed interest contracts are banned, needs if it is to be successful to operate within a type of financial system in which bank-industry relationships are sufficiently close and pervasive for profit- and loss-sharing arrangements to be acceptable to both sides. However,...

Following the introduction of its structural adjustment loans the World Bank became the object of the criticism that had until then been directed only at the IMF and its stabilisation and adjustment programmes. This article shows that structural adjustment loans do in fact take the traditional...