The International Monetary Fund : An Evolving Role As A Monetary Policy Tool

Inflation in China accelerated in november, as economic growth picked up and food prices rose. Chinese consumers paid 2% more for good and services in november then they did a year ago, the government's national bureau statistics reported on a Sunday. While that up from a 1.7% annual increase in october, it nevertheless represents tame inflation for the world's second largest economy. A year ago the country was experiencing an annual inflation rate at 4%. the Chinese government prefers to keep its annual inflation rate below 4%- a level it seems as consistent with health economic growth and consumer demand. The inflation rate averaged 4.23 percent reaching an all time high of 27.70 percent in october of 1994 and a record low of -2.20 percent in march of 1999. in china the most important components of the CPI basket are food at 31.8 percent of total weight and residence at 17.2 percent. Recreation, education and culture articles account for 13.8 percent; transportation and communication for 10 percent, healthcare and personal articles at 9.6 percent, clothing at 8.5 percent; household facilities, articles and services for 5.6 percent; tobacco liquor and articles for the remaining 3.5 percent. The CPI basket is reviewed every five years on the basis of household surveys. Revisions reflect new spending patterns and economic development, according to the nation bureau of statistics.

Xiaohe Zhang School of Economics, Politics and Tourism Faculty of Business and Law The University of Newcastle. Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia Telephone: 612-49215034 Fax: 612-49216919 Email: James.Zhang.@newcastle.edu.au Abstract Since the beginning of the economic reform process in 1979, the Chinese currency (yuan) was devalued on many occasions until 1994 when the two-tier foreign exchange system was ended. While the official rate of yuan had been maintained constant over seven years since 1998, the pressure on the revaluation of yuan intensified. After years of speculation and hearsay, China finally revalued the RMB by 2.1% in July 2005. There are arguments currently on how and to

China’s economy has been largely influenced by political activities before the 1990s. Several economic reforms had already been put in to place since 1978 but the defining change was only triggered in 1992 with the speech by Mr. Deng Xiaoping, where he affirmed the nation of their shift towards a market-oriented system (Chen, Quan, & Liu, 2013).

Furthermore, monetary conditions in China have changed as a result in Chinese’s GDP growth. The Chinese Central bank has reduced its reserve requirements and the

In 2005, Zhou Xiaochuan, the Central Bank Government of China who has been in power for the past 13 years, announced that the Renminbi would switch exchange rate regimes and would begin to follow a more flexible regime that was tied to a basket of different currencies. Prior to this new change, the Chinese yuan was strictly pegged to the US dollar which helped them thrive economically in the global market. Less than a decade before the exchange rate regime was changed, the Asian financial crisis occurred and many East Asian countries were impacted. Compared to its neighboring countries, China was not impacted as badly as other countries, therefore it continued to stay afloat during this difficult period of time and continued

After the economic reforms of 1978, China gradually became the manufacturing hub of the world and its GDP catapulted from 214 billion USD and 9th in the world to almost 11 trillion and 2nd in the world in 2015 (focus economics, 2016). China’s financial system has managed to sustain this rapid economic growth for many years, mostly through the appropriate allocation of capital (Yan, 2013).

In the recent past, China’s economy has grown at a high rate attracting the attention of the foreign investors. Its gross domestic product has also been high, with the year 2014 recording the highest figure of over ten percent of the world’s economy. The overall structure of its economy has also improved; the unemployment rates have gone down with prices rising at a moderate rate. It is always clear that with a high rate of unemployment within a country, the income levels also tend to be low affecting the living standards of the people, which in turn results to lower productivity levels in the country. Regardless of maintaining a positive balance of payments, the country’s economy also faces some challenges. “China’s economy is facing economic challenge regarding possibilities of deflationary risks” (Mulroney 15). Its economy is also experiencing relatively high costs incurred during the financing of the enterprises. The local governments are overburdened with massive amounts of debts that need to be clear. All these challenges are slowing down the rate of its economic growth.

A1. China began its 2008, fiscal year with a continuing growth rate in double digits until the Global Financial Crisis struck the world leaving the United States and the Europe economically wounded. Though during the phase it was assumed China would be immune to the GFC, however the banks collapsing in the Europe and the America dragged China into a financial mess itself. The recorded GDP growth for the fiscal years 2009-10 were 9.6% and 9.2% respectively. (Li, Willett & Zhang, 2012). However, for other countries it might be delighted to have such a potent growth rate, it was missed that the

China has achieved brisk economic growth since late 1970’s, with an average annual growth rate of 9.8% over the past 27 years. Such economic growth owes not only to economic reform began at the end of 1978, when the third session of the Central Committee of the 11th National Congress of Chinese Communist Party was held and later regarded as a landmark in the existing Chinese history, but also to administrative reform accompanying with economic reform.

In order to increase China’s consumption, it is important to figure out feasible policies that the Chinese government could implement to stimulate its consumption efficiently. Anderson (2007) points out China’s firms’ expropriate market share and profits from other countries cause China’s excess savings. Therefore, China’s imbalance economy does not result from low consumptions, but results from Chinese companies’ high profits and their rising savings. The banking system data shows that the household savings rate has fallen in the beginning of the decade. However, the drop in household savings rate is offset by a rise in the enterprise deposit share. This is confirmed by the flow of funds estimates. Although both household and government saving rates are high, neither ratio has changed much over the past five years. Instead, the real driver of the recent Chinese "savings boom" is the corporate sector, in which the estimated gross savings rate has shot up by nearly 7 percentage points since the beginning of the decade.

IMF and the World Bank were created after World War II. Rebuilding nations after the war was costly and this burden needed to be shared amongst nations. With global adherence in its agenda, UK and USA proposed the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to help prevent nation in this rebuilding process. Having just experienced the Great Depression, they wanted a policy to help nations in certain crisis.

China, one of the large emerging markets, with the implementation of its “reform and opening up policy” made in 1978. China has successfully transformed itself from an inflexible centrally-planned economy to an open and market-oriented economy, and accomplished remarkable progress in trade market. China has maintained high and stable growth rates for over two decades. Since China is becoming an increasingly important member in the world’s economic scene, the movements of the foreign exchange rate could be an important issue for Chinese firms. On 19 of June 2010, China’s central bank declared that it will further implement the reform of foreign exchange and enhance the flexibility of RMB exchange rate (Money for life

The International Monetary Fund, otherwise known as the IMF and the World Bank are two of the most economic organizations. While they are both economic organizations, they have different objectives. In order to understand these objectives, one must know why these organizations were formed and what if anything they have accomplished. Based on said accomplishments and also based on their initial goals, one can infer which of the two has been a success. Therefore, it can be said that when it comes to keeping with the original goal as to why the organization was founded, the International Monetary Fund has failed while the World Bank has succeeded.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was one of the many international organizations that emerged after the end of World War II. The primary function of the IMF is to promote the international financial stability and spur monetary cooperation. Many countries see the IMF as a “lender of last resort” (Thacker, 1999:38), meaning countries borrow money from the Fund for “short-term balance of payment support” (Steinwand and Stone, 2007:11) in order to avert the collapse of their domestic economies. Many of the loan programs offered by the IMF are accompanied by the terms commonly known as conditionality. IMF conditionality is a set of intensive fiscal and monetary policy reforms that must be implemented by the borrowing country. An important question often raised in connection with IMF imposed conditionality is whether such programs are effective and they work to enhance the economic situation of the developing country. In this paper, I argue that there are mixed results regarding the IMF program effectiveness, and the success of IMF lending program does depend on domestic factors of the borrowing country.

Political economy is not a new word for us because of the close relationships between politics and the economy. The development in politics is due to the development in society and the development in society is mostly driven by the economy. The parallel existence and mutual interaction of ‘state’ and ‘market’ in the modern world creates ‘political economy’; without both state and market there could be no political economy (Gilpin, 2003, P9). Market allocates resources to a particular group, class or region where conditions are most favorable. As a consequence, market economies result in the uneven development both domestically and internationally. As our issue is about international