Battle for development cash heats up at IMF/World Bank meetings

Development agencies gathering in Washington this week face one of their toughest battles in years: getting a rich world worried about wars abroad and elections at home to commit more cash to the world's poorest countries. The poor world's development is backsliding at an historic rate amid debt crises, higher-for-longer global interest rates and mounting investment needs. At the last round of IMF and World Bank meetings in October, global leaders expected rich-world inflation to ease more quickly than it has, and thus for interest rate cuts to take pressure off financing costs.