Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History and African Studies, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut, USA.
MAIN SITE:
www.africahistory.net
A.
Most current Structural Adjustment and Economic Reform Programs around the world have a common international context of origin. In this site we explore some of the various dimensions of the IMF record not only in Africa but also in Asia and the Caribbean because we observe similarities in terms of initial conditions, imposed conditionalities, ideological orientations, implicit and explicit objectives and impact on the countries hosting the IMF programs. These consequences include the following:
- Forced devaluation
- Forced privatization
- A free fall in the value of the domestic currency
- Lower purchasing power
- A fall in the standard of living
- Unemployment and retrenchment of workers
- Inflation and the phenomenon of rising prices
- Food riots and social unrest
- Challenges to trade unions and labor
- Substantial challenges to human rights organizations
- Increased mortality because of the compulsory removal of subsidies on health
- Declines in school attendance along gender lines
- Challenges towards democratic governance
- The rise and/or consolidation of military dictatorships
- De-industrialization as the economies are inundated with cheap foreign products
- Reduction in the number of nationals owning industries due to privatization and an invasion of foreign capitalists
- Intensified unequal development amongst ethnic groups
- Ethnic tension
- Transfer of as much as 40% of the domestic budget in debt repayment to the creditors/bankers of Euro-America
- De facto loss of sovereignty
- The feminization of poverty
- Child Labor- reluctantly sanctioned by impoverished/"SAPPED" parents who depend on the child's meager supplement to make ends meet.
- The proliferation of terrorist organizations, armed conflict or/and resistance movements- with recruits from the expanding army of the unemployed
B.
REGIONAL EXAMPLES
The above effects have been documented extensively in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and other African countries. In the Caribbean, Jamaica is a classic example. Indonesia and South Korea are among the most recent in Asia. In most instances democratization becomes more and more illusory since dictatorial generals or factions of the army sympathetic to the draconian IMF conditionalities have often seized power. The Babangida coup of 1985 in Nigeria is a great example. This coup has been called "the IMF coup." In Somalia and Rwanda, total chaos and ethnic conflict ensued as the national pie shrunk and unequal development amongst regions and between one ethnic group and another, intensified. The IMF cannot always be blamed for the crises preceding the bailout. In several cases domestic elites plundered the wealth of their countries and engaged in blatant mismanagement of national resources. Often they were associated with the wastage of resources in non-productive prestige projects and siphoned off vital resources to Swiss and other Western banks. We should note, though,that the IMF prescription has seldom helped to solve the crisis and the agents and agencies that seem to gain from its advice are in most cases foreign banking and financial institutions, invariably protected by the IMF.Poor peasants, factory workers and civil servants usually pay the price of the draconian conditionalities imposed by the IMF rescue squad. The organization seems to be unconcerned about the ill effects of its program or 'progrom.' It pushes on with its campaign for the removal of subsidies in poor economies whilst turning a blind eye to the massive use of subsidies in agriculture and the aviation industry, in the United States and Europe.This point was courageously made in Cancun Mexico at the annual meeting of the WTO, a sister organization created in 1995.
Market Reform And Corporate Globalization
Market Reform And Corporate Globalization -
24-06-08, 09:25 AM
Linear Mode
