Letter Addresses IMF Policies that Undermine Development in Africa
Thursday, October 4, 2007(Washington, DC) – This week 125 civil society
organizations sent a letter to Dominique Strauss-Khan, the incoming
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, calling on him to
address IMF policies that undermine developing nations’ ability to
increase health and education spending. The former French Finance
Minister was selected to head the IMF starting November 1. In his
opening press conference Monday, he committed to institutional reform.
Africa Action spearheaded this civil society response that outlines some
key elements of the necessary reform in collaboration with several other
non-governmental organizations including ActionAid International USA,
Essential Action, Health GAP, RESULTS, and the Student Global AIDS
Campaign among others. The letter is now available here. (pdf)
The letter addresses an IMF Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) report
that finds as much as 74% of additional foreign aid to 29 countries in
sub-Saharan Africa between 1999-2005 has been diverted from its intended
purposes and allocated to domestic debt payment and international
currency reserves because of IMF policies regulating macroeconomic and
monetary policies.
Marie Clarke Brill, Interim Executive Director of Africa Action said
this morning, “In light of the devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and
global efforts to achieve universal access to treatment by 2010, it is
unconscionable that IMF policies force governments to siphon desperately
needed additional aid flows away from health ministries in order to meet
the IMF’s overly conservative inflation targets. If Mr. Strauss-Khan is
serious about IMF reform, these issues must be at the top of his agenda.”
The letter calls for four key changes in policy, including removing
obstacles to increased spending on health, HIV/AIDS and education,
thereby enabling policy makers in borrowing countries; exploring and
adopting more expansive fiscal and monetary policy options; providing
immediate debt cancellation; and addressing budget and wage bill
ceilings that undermine impoverished countries’ ability to provide
adequate salaries for health and education workers, hire additional
needed health workers and teachers and scale up and improve the quality
of the health and education sectors.
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