BANGKOK 11 October 2026: As finance ministers arrive in Bangkok for the IMF and World Bank Annual meetings (12-18 October), Fight Inequality Alliance is calling for debt cancellation and an end to the lending rules that force governments to pay creditors before they pay for hospitals, schools and food. Sixteen countries* in the Global South are spending on average 45% of the annual budget paying creditors. This is nearly twice as much as their health and education budgets combined.
FIA General Secretary Jenny Ricks said:
“The IMF and World Bank are legacy institutions still writing the economic rules for the rest of the world. Their austerity programmes force governments to cut funding from hospitals and schools while every dollar sent to creditors is a dollar taken from a classroom, a clinic or a family’s food budget. Cancel the debt, tax the super-rich, and stop making ordinary people pay for a crisis they didn’t create.
“Bangkok will deliver more of the same. The era of the IMF and World Bank is over. Workers, teachers, nurses and young people from Nairobi to Jakarta are already building an economy for the 99% and they are not waiting for permission”.
FIA Kenya National Coordinator Brenda Osoro said:
“Prices of bread, cooking oil, and fuel keep rising as the government chases IMF targets with new taxes. And nearly 67% of revenue is swallowed by debt repayment while Kenya’s healthcare system collapses — clinics without drugs, health workers demoralized, schools stripped of essentials. This is a crisis by design and Kenyans can’t take this any anymore.”
Fight Inequality Alliance is calling for governments to
- Cancel debt. Wipe out the debts crushing poorer countries, and make every lender take the hit, from banks and hedge funds to the IMF and World Bank.
- End austerity. No more cuts to schools and hospitals. Tax the richest instead..
- Tax the super-rich. Back a global tax on billionaires and the new UN tax treaty.
- Stop selling off public services. The World Bank should fund free public healthcare and education, not push their privatisation.
- Give poorer countries a real say. The IMF and World Bank are run by rich countries. Every country deserves a fair vote.
Media contact
Daud Kayisi I Media and Communications Officer I Fight Inequality Alliance I daud.kayisi@fightinequality.org
In Bangkok I Ed Pomfret I Communications & Media Lead I ed.pomfret@fightinequality.org
Notes to the editor
*Burkina Faso, Eswathini, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Mexico, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Peru.
Source: Development Finance International (DFI), Debt Service Watch 2025 briefing
Fight Inequality Alliance is a growing global movement organising and mobilising to counter the excessive concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a small elite. FIA unites a wide range of social movements, grassroots and community-based organisations, civil society organisations, trade unions, artists and individual activists from across the world who share a vision and purpose in fighting the structural causes of inequality together. It is currently calling for action on the cost of living around the world – https://fightinequality.org/your-cost-of-living-is-rising-fast-governments-must-act