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Imf : Monetary Policies Over Time

Decent Essays

IMF policies over time
IMF “shock therapy”
In the mid-1970s, countries which had borrowed heavily in order to pay for oil imports were hit hard. The real interest rates on loans rapidly escalated, while prices for commodities used to earn foreign exchange to repay these debts fell rapidly. The recession in 1981 and 82 took hold and this vice-like grip led to the Mexican debt crisis of 1982 followed by the initiation of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) by the IMF. From that time, indebted countries would only receive new loans on condition of a major "restructuring" of their entire economies, which is always the same recipe based on the slashing of public sector-funded national development projects and social welfare. The aim was (and …show more content…

In January 1990, an agreement signed with the IMF required expenditure cuts amounting to 5 percent of gross domestic product. The results were nothing short of catastrophic. Real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months of 1990. Inflation in 1990 was in excess of 70 percent. In January 1991, another devaluation of the dinar of 30 percent was carried out, leading to another round of price increases. Inflation was running at 140 percent in 1991 soaring to 937 percent and 1134 percent respectively in 1992 and 1993. One of the major demands of the IMF was that the federal government and financial authorities should cease funding "loss-making" enterprises. In 1989 some 248 firms were liquidated and 89,400 workers were laid off. But more was to come. In the first nine months of 1990 a further 889 enterprises with 525,000 workers were subjected to bankruptcy proceedings, with the largest concentration of such firms in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo.
Describing the effects of this economic treadmill, the British economist Michael Barratt Brown wrote: "There seemed to be and indeed there was no hope. The same remedy was being administered to all the countries in debt in the Third World and in the communist world alike. 'Export more and pay off your debts! ' was the chorus of the World Bank and the IMF; and the more the debtor countries exported of the same, often mainly primary, products the more

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