IMF, World Bank And Africa Essay

In the documentary Life and Debt, it is explained through the stories of local people, the economic and social crisis of Jamaica. With Jamaica receiving mandatory loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1977 because of lack of alternatives, Jamaica was promised meaningful development. Unfortunately, this only made the situation worse because of the extreme policies and foreign economic agendas that came with the loans, forcing Jamaica into even further debt. Therefore, it is my opinion that it is because of the policies and greed of the IMF and The World Bank that came along with the loans, that Jamaica is currently 4.5 billion dollars in debt.

Argentina is a well known case study of the failure or negative outcome of some IMF's standard policies. In fact, Argentina carefully applied policies dictated by IMF, but, until it stuck up with those policies, it couldn't step out from its crisis, and it ran into even deeper economic and social problems. This failure of the IMF has often been cited as the demonstration of unsuitability of the standard IMF approach (the usual so-called Washington Consensus) for solving economic crisis in developing countries (Serra & Stiglitz, 2008, p. 44). Also, this failure led to hostile feelings versus IMF among the population of Argentina (Kanenguiser, 2000) and fueled generalised suspects over IMF decision-making process being politicized and serving

Due to capital limitations, most governments, particularly in the developing nations borrow funds from their bilateral friends and organizations such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in earnest to enable them pursue development projects, and sometimes to correct balance-of-payment deficits. Nevertheless, such governments must adhere to some outlined conditions that are spelt out in the article of agreement in order for them to secure the loans; otherwise, the loans are withheld (White, 2012). Equally, a healthy population significantly contributes to economic development of

Some of the world’s poorest countries, with some of the highest child labor and illiteracy rates lie in Sub Saharan Africa. People generally associate the region only with poor economic conditions and all of the social disorder that goes along with 3rd World Status. While some of this reputation is deserved, many people are also failing to see the vast potential for this part of the world. There are several factors that African governments should look into if they want to effectively and efficiently revamp this areas quality of life. One way to do so is by improving the more crucial aspects to healthy functioning region, for example, allowing children to possess their natural rights to a decent education. This could influence an increase

The World Bank is known to fund many infrastructure projects in developing countries, presumably as a means to achieve their goals of increasing development in those countries. Hydroelectric dams are some of the much-maligned infrastructure projects funded by the World Bank. In a report authored by employees of the World Bank itself, the authors themselves highlight the “adverse environmental and related social impacts” of large dams, while attempting to draw a distinction between “relatively good dams and bad dams”. (Ledec & Quintero, 2003)

Over the last 50 years, the world has struggled to maintain an economic balance and stability, while flourishing countries try to maintain a steady income to support its people and relations with other countries. Therefore, when a continent like Africa fails to maintain a stable government and economy, super powers such as America decide to intervene with its relations. Africa has great potential to become another pillar of the world’s economic structure with its mass amounts of uncultivated land. Unfortunately, corruption and irresponsible governments hinder that progress. Foreign aid while helpful should be limited to a yearly amount because it allows the government to repudiate responsibility and gives room for corruption; it creates a

The three major international economic institutions are the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization; this book mainly focuses on the IMF and the World Bank, due to the author’s first-hand experience with both institutions. The IMF, a public institution built as a guiding hand for economic stability around the world, has brought false

During the 1980s, the Baker and Brady Plans were initiated to alleviate developing countries debts. The former plan called upon financial institutions to increase lending to developing countries by up to 50% and the latter plan sought to annul debt through collaboration with private-sector lenders. Developing countries’ debt problems became known as debt overhang whereby the “presence of existing ‘inherited’ debt” exacerbated the debtor countries’ economic hardships. While the Baker Plan was largely ineffective, the Brady Plan helped revive the Third World debt market and the composition of capital flows in the Brady countries shifted away from the public sector to the private sector in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) and equity.

There is a distinct ineffectiveness on the part of the World Bank and IMF to effectively utilize their plethora of economic intelligence, strategic relationships, and technical and industrial knowledge to help a country to an improved economic state. Uganda received as much as $650 million in US dollars for the purposes of debt relief back in 1998. The relief was to provide assistance in several ways to include an educational program, “the purchase and cancellation by HIPC Trust Fund of outstanding IDA credits” “the payment of debt service by HIPC Trust Fund”, “savings on IDA charges associated with these instruments”, (Press Release 1998). In short the World Bank was to cover as much as half of Uganda’s annual debt. They were awarded this because they had met the “requirements”, and Uganda was said to have “the strongest performing economies in Africa”. (Press Release 1998)

To begin, cities within the global south are more likely to need aid from the IMF. The United States currently holds 1/3 of the votes within the IMF, as a result the decision making power over nations within the global south rest in the hands of the western world. This dynamic is problematic because the IMF’s, SAP’s programs only add to further economic and social resource depletion within developing cities. With little to none voting influence from persons within the global south, the “west” through the IMF will continue structuring loans from an “outsider” perspective. As an “outsider” the west is given control over people and resources in the developing world.

Agents of private banks travel around the world to convince the Third World leaders and politicians to borrow from them, and the bank convinced those politicians in unethical ways. “Third World debt grew rapidly and bankers are hurry to lend money to developing countries.” (Bulow&Rogdoff, 3,1988) Bankers started out with low interest rate and suddenly skyrocketed to 20 percent or even higher interest rate. However, during the 80’s to 90’s, the overload interest rate of private banks led the Third World debt crisis.

Many governmental and non-governmental organizations argued that external constraint like high inherited levels of foreign debt have crippled in the capacity of low income countries to overcome poverty and that concessional lending’s are not enough. This lead to the ‘Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC)’ initiative in 1996 in collaboration with world bank to eliminate unsustainable debt in the world’s poorest and most heavily indebted countries.

Over the past few decades Africa’s overall economic performance has been in decline especially in the 1980s. There has been little prospect for the future of most of these developing countries, however during recent years there has been a degree of optimism considering the development performance of the economy as well as providing a better long term future. The crisis emerged in 1982 with their debt rising above $140 billion to over $270 billion in 1990 (World Bank, 2013). There has been stagnation regarding the growth of their economies but despite periods of success Africa has been unable to unleash its full potential. In order to fully understand the effects of the debt crisis further examination into the background and causes of the crisis is needed, with attention to specific countries. The effect of the debt on the development of the region has to be discussed in detail in order to understand the difficulties most of these countries face with repaying their debts and promoting continuous economic growth. By highlighting the degree of optimism which has been evident in recent years for developing countries to progress, we can argue that there is a future for most of these countries when they look past the obstacle that debt presents. Especially in the 21st century where Africa is seen as one of the leading economies. This raises the possibility that despite huge overall debt stocks, that Africa may rise on the world economic platform and over take a few of the world’s

This paper looks at the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) a project by the IMF and World Bank.

International banks have made risky loans all over the world because they knew that if trouble arose, the fund would step in to resolve the situation – as it has done in the past. The IMF has played a critical role in many of the epochal events in the 1990’s. The IMF lent 18 billion dollars to Mexico in 1994, after the peso collapsed. It gave Russia over 10 billion dollars in 1999. The IMF has helped drive inflation from 1,000 percent a year down to a tolerable 10 percent a year, thanks to Russia listening to what the IMF said and doing as they suggested. It has given Indonesia 10 billion dollars, and has helped Indonesia demonopolize industries. It gave 4 billion to Thailand, which was the epicenter of the East Asian Crisis. The IMF helped closed dozens of reckless banks. True, the IMF did many little things wrong, however, it did the important ones right. The Philippines is a prime example on how effectively the IMF can work. For years, Filipinos suffered the weaknesses of economic and business policies. Under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund for nearly 30 years, and especially during the past decade, they faced up to their problems. Many sectors of their society suffered greatly, and some complained loudly. However, they persisted and, with the help of the IMF and the courage of the Philippine people, they exited from the IMF program. How did they do this? They assembled one of the best economic