Monetary policies – the actions undertaken by a nation's central bank to control the money supply – influence a range of economic justice issues. Notably, their interaction with fiscal policies impacts a country’s domestic resource mobilisation capacity. Yet, few civil society organisations at national and international level focus on influencing monetary policy. To a large extent, this is because for decades monetary policy has been taken out of the public and political debate, and relegated to mere technical issues for specialists. It also reflects a lack of awareness of alternatives to the neoliberal understanding of monetary policy as primarily an instrument for controlling inflation.

The handbook is the outcome of a project led by ActionAid International, Eurodad, INESC (Brazil), SEATINI and CEHURD (Uganda), SIKKA (Tanzania), and WEMOS.