Today, the world is confronting a “polycrisis” – many dire crises occurring simultaneously, reinforcing and feeding into each other, that are inseparable. Global South countries are experiencing climate, hunger, energy, debt, and development crises, made worse by wars and conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Responses from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to these crises are being scrutinised, and for good reason.

When, earlier this year, the Vatican convened a conference focused on the global debt crisis, news from Egypt offered a peek at factors behind the crisis, some of which came from Washington: Subsidised bread prices had quadrupled due to IMF pressure to cut subsidies. Likewise, in Kenya, protests erupted against an austerity plan the government had proposed in response to reforms urged by the IMF as conditions for lending.

All this is bad enough. But the IMF is needlessly making the crises even worse by forcing its most indebted borrowers to pay extra fees – surcharges (PDF). More and more countries are having to pay these unnecessary “junk fees,” as some opponents refer to them, as the debt crisis goes on.

Why are the surcharges unnecessary? First, the IMF does not need revenue from the surcharges – one of the two main rationales it puts forward to justify the policy. As the civil society organisation Latindadd recently noted, the Fund has met its precautionary balances target this year; it has enough money without........

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