World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings come amid dissatisfaction from countries in the Global South that question the post-war global financial architecture. This is a problem for the West. Efforts to help Ukraine only make matters worse.

“Now the pandemic and inflation, fueled by the Russian invasion, have brought a record number of developing countries to the brink of a sovereign debt crisis.. Helping them should be a top priority for the IMF and the World Bank,” Mihir Sharma, Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, writes in an article for Bloomberg..

He notes that even soon-to-be-outgoing World Bank Chairman David Malpass agrees that “debt restructuring is not moving too fast and there hasn’t been enough discussion yet about what steps to take to achieve debt sustainability.”. The slow pace has left many countries wondering if multilateral lenders have lost sight of their needs.

Sharma emphasizes that the IMF and the World Bank play a very important role in building confidence in the post-war liberal order and the very idea that this order should work for the benefit of everyone, even the poorest and most indebted countries.. Institutional strife could end nearly 80 years of agreement between rich and poor countries, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley and Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah recently wrote..

The author emphasizes that the situation is aggravated by the fact that all this is happening just when the West criticizes developing countries for insufficient criticism of Russia's aggression. Last year, India's foreign minister made headlines when he said " Sharma agrees that such criticisms are largely exaggerated.. No one can blame Europe or the US for seeking wider condemnation of Russia's brutal and unprovoked invasion.. No one also questions how much of their own resources Western countries have decided to invest in helping Ukraine and its self-defense..

“But when global institutions break their rules in supporting these efforts, their actions deserve more attention.. In particular, last month the IMF board of directors decided to allow lending to countries that find themselves in a “situation of exceptionally high uncertainty.”. In its eight decades of existence, the IMF has diligently avoided lending to countries involved in conflicts.. This was highlighted two years ago when the money promised to Ethiopia did not come after civil war broke out in the northern part of the country,” recalls the Indian expert..

However, four days after the board's decision, the fund used its new funding rules to allocate $15.6 billion to Ukraine.. At the same time, Sharma recalls that Kyiv is already the third largest IMF borrower and has been holding “this title” for more than ten years.. In the eyes of the West, this may seem like a good example of how a reputable institution is quickly responding to a new urgent threat.. For the rest of the world, this is "

“When Greece needed help ten years ago, the IMF paid instead of Germany and France. It was a mistake. Today Ukraine needs help and deserves it. A country should not surrender its sovereignty due to lack of money. But her friends in the West can afford to keep Ukraine solvent.. They should help directly and transparently, instead of undermining global institutions,” writes Sharma..