Transparency in International Financial Institutions

Abstract

This work provides a comparative analysis of international financial institutions’ transparency policies and denounces their shortcomings and excessive prudence, and in the case of less formal cooperation bodies (such as the G-20 or the Financial Stability Board), the lack of attention to basic transparency concerns. The study shows that a higher degree of institutionalization calls for a more coherent and open transparency policy, as more structured institutions have at their disposal the appropriate resources and are more easily subject to pressure by the civil society. The IMF and the World Bank are clearly more transparent than informal cooperation fora such as the G-20 or the Financial Stability Board. As a development institution, the World Bank gets more benefits from transparency and it has achieved a remarkable level of procedural guarantees that could be set as an example for other international financial institutions, including the IMF. However, in practice, even in the World Bank there is excessive latitude for opaqueness.