Sombat Chuekrod, a coconut farmer, travelled more than 200 kilometres to stand alongside hundreds of others gathered in Bangkok on Friday, 16 October, calling on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to overhaul the way they engage with developing nations.

Senior finance and economic officials — among them central bank governors and treasury ministers — convened in Bangkok this week for the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, where delegates addressed rising inflation alongside a range of global economic pressures.

In its latest assessments, the IMF pointed to a build-up of public debt across member economies — a trend it attributed to a succession of shocks stretching from the pandemic period through to the armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East — and called on governments to bring their spending into closer alignment with revenues.

Sombat, 51, was among the hundreds of protesters who took to the streets of Bangkok, joined by rights groups and analysts speaking to a news outlet, pressing the IMF and World Bank to overhaul their practices. He told reporters, as he walked beneath reform-themed banners, that people across Thailand were already contending with poverty.

Protest organisers, including Lidy Nacpil, called on bodies such as the IMF to prioritise climate financing and tax reforms that benefit lower-income populations, rather than pressing governments to reduce subsidies and social expenditure. In a written release, Nacpil stated that administrations across the Global South were being compelled to cut back on public health, education, and social protection outlays in order to meet debt obligations owed to wealthier nations and private creditors — debts she described as illegitimate.

In a conversation with a broadcaster on the fringes of the meetings, Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar described the current global situation as an "inequality emergency," contending that IMF calls for fiscal consolidation amounted to a push for reduced expenditure on essential social services at a time of inflation driven by armed conflict, and that such a course of action would put further upward pressure on prices. He expressed concern that the measures could affect food availability, and anticipated that reductions across healthcare, education, and basic social support would follow.

The IMF lifted its global growth forecast during the same period, pointing to stronger-than-anticipated economic resilience across key markets. The report noted, however, that gains in prosperity were unevenly distributed, with the most exposed nations dropping further back relative to others. Nations that rely on oil imports and sit outside the flow of artificial intelligence investment were identified as facing the steepest economic headwinds.

Across all member nations grappling with mounting debt, the Fund pointed toward tighter expenditure controls and the restoration of fiscal reserves drawn down through successive rounds of crisis-driven outlays.

When a broadcaster put the question of what lower-income nations ought to do, Petya Koeva Brooks — serving as deputy chief of research at the IMF — indicated that, while those countries faced a comparatively harder set of circumstances, their path forward ran through fiscal adjustment, whether by trimming expenditure or by expanding revenue streams.

The IMF put forward proposals to narrow the reach of energy and food support measures introduced following the conflict in Ukraine, a move that came alongside an advisory from the UN Development Programme that a full removal of those measures could push around 130 million people below the poverty line.

During an interview, Nacpil — one of the protest's organisers — put a direct question to policymakers about where the income threshold for subsidy eligibility actually sits, and what level of poverty a person must reach before authorities deem them entitled to financial support.

Reza Baqir, now with Alvarez and Marsal's Sovereign Advisory Services, drew on his tenure as Pakistan's central bank governor to describe the competing pressures policymakers in lower-income nations navigate during financial crises, noting that the experience also underscored the need for countries to address domestic governance weaknesses, build independent fiscal reserves, and reduce dependence on external lending programmes so they can support their populations in a targeted way. Separately, Christina Segal-Knowles of the Rockefeller Foundation argued that developing nations currently face a constrained set of options — absorbing debt at elevated interest rates or imposing steep spending reductions that put longer-term development targets at risk.

A package of measures taking shape under Segal-Knowles's direction would channel increased financing to countries with the greatest needs, delivering that support at concessional rates over an extended period — an approach she labelled a "growth and investment reset."

Gathered beneath a flyover in Bangkok that Friday evening, demonstrators settled in for an overnight stay. Activist Supaporn Malailoy told those present that the assembled citizens were not passive onlookers but parties with a direct stake in any negotiations underway, adding that the matter extended beyond a question of borrowed funds and touched on the broader shape and trajectory of how the country's development would be directed.