An IMF team has started a review of the conditions it applied to bail out South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil. The review will also look at what happened in Mexico, the Philippines, Turkey and Argentina.
The review will question the IMF‘s assumptions, what needs to be changed and see whether the use of structural conditionality should be limited in future.
Chapters will look at macro-economic policy generally; IMF financing, private sector involvement and the implications of debt standstills for adjustment; fiscal policies and their social impacts; exchange rate policy; structural policies; and social safety-nets.
Some NGOs have stressed that the social implications of all the IMF‘s policies should be considered not just fiscal policy. Particularly, the impact of high rates of interest and structural policies on small and medium enterprises, and unemployment. The IMF has declined to publicly disclose the study’s terms of reference because they are “constantly changing”.
Tim Lane, IMF, 700 19th St, NW, Washington DC 200431, USA tlane@imf.org
