The report Our Future is Public - Why the IMF and World Bank must support public services draws from the proceedings of an event held at the 2022 IMF/WBG Spring Meetings Civil Society Policy Forum, entitled ‘The Future is Public: Prioritising public services in the light of COVID-19 and climate change’, which was organised by us, ActionAid International, Eurodad, the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Oxfam International, Public Services International (PSI), Society for International Development (SID), Transnational Institute (TNI) and Wemos.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have positioned themselves as the ‘first responders’ to the multiple crises of the past three years. This larger role has made more evident their often problematic approach to public services and the gap that both institutions maintain between their occasionally progressive global rhetoric on public services and their practices at country level.

Although the Bank has made significant efforts in supporting countries’ health and education response to the pandemic through lending, grants and technical assistance, parts of the institution are pushing forward a market-oriented approach to service provision.

The IFC continues to finance commercial private health providers despite evidence that they are not accessible to lower-income groups, and support PPPs in health despite evidence of the risks and failures of this model.

IFIs such as the World Bank and the IMF continue to fail to protect public services, despite their rhetoric arguing the opposite. They must adopt a rights-based approach to public services, meaning that they must unambiguously support strong, publicly provided, publicly financed, gender transformative and democratically controlled services that provide universal access and universal coverage. This should be reflected in their financing and support to countries, as well as in their global political influence.

The 2021 manifesto The Future is Public, already endorsed by more than 200 organisations from all over the world, provides an alternative vision for the future, one in which the public is key and must be at the core of the response to the existential challenges that we face.