The IMF and the World Bank
The myth of "helping the poor" and "development"
"The joint IMF–World Bank comprehensive approach to debt reduction is designed to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage. To date, debt reduction packages under the HIPC Initiative have been approved for 36 countries, 30 of them in Africa, providing $76 billion in debt-service relief over time. Three additional countries are eligible for HIPC Initiative assistance."
Back in 2008, some analysts showed that the HIPC initiative had failed, and failed miserably.
Let's take just one aspect behind the failure. "The creteria used for country selection excluded the mostly highly populated developing countries (for example, Nigeria — 120 million inhabitants — which was on the very first list in 1996) and kep only small countries that are both very por and heavily indebted... The countries where the majority of the world's poor people live are not included: China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, and the like. In fact, the initiative concerns only 11 percent of the total population of developing countries..."
It must be noted "that to benefit from the HIPC initiative, the countries concerned had to be free of arrears to the IMF and the World Bank.."
"Countries applying for the HIPC initiative must adopt a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank. This document must indicate the use that will be made of the resources made available by this initiative, and contain a certain number of commitments relating to the implementation of classical structural adjustment measures: privatisation if public companies, reduction of the salaried workforce, reduction of grants, elimination of government
subsidies, deregulation of the labour market. In other words, the whole arsenal of ultra-liberal mesaures which have contributed to the impoverishmnet of African populations, to the degradation of social services, to fall in life expectancy of over seven years, to the return of diseases we had thought eradicated, to increased unempoyment for young graduates, to setting back industrialisation, and to the creation of chronic food shortages."
— Moussa Tchangari,"Un projet néo-libéral pour l'Afrique"
Source: Toussaint and Millet, Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, 2010, p. 178-186
The myth of "helping the poor" and "development"
"The joint IMF–World Bank comprehensive approach to debt reduction is designed to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage. To date, debt reduction packages under the HIPC Initiative have been approved for 36 countries, 30 of them in Africa, providing $76 billion in debt-service relief over time. Three additional countries are eligible for HIPC Initiative assistance."
Back in 2008, some analysts showed that the HIPC initiative had failed, and failed miserably.
Let's take just one aspect behind the failure. "The creteria used for country selection excluded the mostly highly populated developing countries (for example, Nigeria — 120 million inhabitants — which was on the very first list in 1996) and kep only small countries that are both very por and heavily indebted... The countries where the majority of the world's poor people live are not included: China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, and the like. In fact, the initiative concerns only 11 percent of the total population of developing countries..."
It must be noted "that to benefit from the HIPC initiative, the countries concerned had to be free of arrears to the IMF and the World Bank.."
"Countries applying for the HIPC initiative must adopt a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank. This document must indicate the use that will be made of the resources made available by this initiative, and contain a certain number of commitments relating to the implementation of classical structural adjustment measures: privatisation if public companies, reduction of the salaried workforce, reduction of grants, elimination of government
subsidies, deregulation of the labour market. In other words, the whole arsenal of ultra-liberal mesaures which have contributed to the impoverishmnet of African populations, to the degradation of social services, to fall in life expectancy of over seven years, to the return of diseases we had thought eradicated, to increased unempoyment for young graduates, to setting back industrialisation, and to the creation of chronic food shortages."
— Moussa Tchangari,"Un projet néo-libéral pour l'Afrique"
Source: Toussaint and Millet, Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, 2010, p. 178-186
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