Gordon Brown and other finance ministers at the Group of Seven rich nations meeting which opens today (Friday 9 February) in Essen, Germany, must fulfill their two-year-old promise to stop international financial institutions imposing damaging economic policies on developing countries, says Christian Aid.

Christian Aid believes G7 ministers should use this opportunity to deliver on their pledge to allow developing countries to 'decide, plan and sequence their economic policies to fit with their own development strategies' - as agreed at the G8 meeting in 2005.

Christian Aid IMF policy expert Olivia McDonald said: 'In 2005, world leaders agreed to stop telling developing countries how to run their economies. This has not happened.

'The IMF and the World Bank - in which the G7 play a dominant role - continue to attach damaging economic conditions to aid which have been proven to have devastating impacts on poor people.'

In a report last year, Christian Aid revealed how poor families in Bolivia were forced to spend up to a quarter of their income on water after the water system was privatised as a condition of a World Bank loan.

This week development secretary Hilary Benn came out against such loan conditions criticising the World Bank for tying financial support to African countries to ideologically driven economic policies such as privatisation.

Christian Aid wants to see the G8's promise to end economic conditionality fulfilled next month when world leaders begin negotiating the next round of World Bank funding.

ENDS

For more information please contact Katy Migiro 020 7523 2058 or Olivia McDonald on 07828 271338 or out of hours call 07850 242 950.