Structural Adjustment

• Interview of Eric Toussaint by Radio France Internationale (RFI), Monday 27 October 2008 on 13H00 radio news.

  « The IMF will take advantage of the present crisis to grant more and bigger loans. »

  3 November 2008

  RFI: The IMF has decided to rescue many European countries such as Iceland, Ukraine, and today, Hungary, by granting them important loans. Why these particular countries according to you? Eric Toussaint: First of all it has to be clear that the IMF itself is going through a crisis. It is in a severely weakened position. Last year it had only one big client left: Turkey. Just six or seven years earlier, the IMF was providing loans totaling more than 100 Billion Dollars, whereas just before (...)

• What are the alternatives for human development?

  
  by Éric Toussaint

  20 October 2008

  In 2008, the financial, economic, food and climate crises have worsened dramatically throughout the world. The effects will be long-lasting. The international organizations and most governments have responded in ways that can only cast further doubt on their own legitimacy. Indeed the majority of the public are perfectly aware that bankers are being bailed out with no concern for the interests of the people. The convergence of these crises shows populations that there is a clear need to (...)

• International Campaign on Illegitimate Debt

  Resolution of solidarity and support for the people of Haiti

  19 September 2008

  Between August 15 and September 7, 2008, the Caribbean was severely hit by four successive hurricanes (Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike) that devastated several regions with disastrous consequences in particular for the peoples of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. We express our fraternal solidarity with these peoples, and we call on the entire world community to respond with concrete support in accordance with the level of need. In Haiti, even before the balance is completed, it is (...)

• Natural Resources are the Common Goods of Humanity

  
  by CADTM

  20 July 2008

  Controlling the use of natural resources is one of the major concerns of all governments. However, large quantities of these natural resources are found in countries of the South (oil, metals, diamond, timber, etc.) and thus attract the great powers, such as the US, the EU or China, who have an imperative need for them to feed their economies. The consequences are often tragic for people in the Global South, who cannot benefit from their own resources. For instance the Democratic Republic (...)

• Global Famine

  by Michel Chossudovsky

  1 June 2008

  Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic and social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the World population. National economies are collapsing, unemployment is rampant. Local level famines have erupted in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America. This "globalization of poverty" —which has largely reversed the achievements of post-war decolonization— was initiated in the Third World coinciding with the debt (...)

• Zambia: Debt Reduction Doesn’t Guarantee Debt Sustainability - World Bank

  by Mwila Nkonge

  5 September 2006

  DEBT reduction is insufficient for debt sustainability, the World Bank has noted. Article by Mwila Nkonge published in The Post (Lusaka).

• GUINEA: Unions threaten indefinite strike

  by IRIN

  7 June 2006

  Guinea's two most powerful trade unions have threatened to call an unlimited general strike from Thursday unless the government acts on demands issued two weeks ago. May fuel price rises, implemented in line with International Monetary Fund's (IMF) policy to end fuel subsidies, have forced across the board price rises putting greater strain on the average Guinean's meagre budget.

• Dogmatic Development: Privatisation and conditionalities in six countries

  by War on Want, PSIRU

  7 April 2004

  This report looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services. It focuses specifically on the sectors of water, electricity, and healthcare, in six countries: Colombia; El Salvador; Indonesia; Mozambique; South Africa; and Sri Lanka. It examines the impact of the requirements and policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and other agencies including (...)

• Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Poor Package for Poverty Reduction

  by Jenina Joy Chavez Malaluan, Shalmali Guttal

  May 2003

  The World Bank and the IMF claim that the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) signal a new approach to tackling the challenges of poverty alleviation and economic development among their low-income clients. In this paper, the authors contend that little has changed in the substance, form and process of World Bank and IMF programmes. clients.

• Poverty Reduction? or PRSP?

  by Shalmali Guttal

  11 March 2003

  PRSPs will create and entrench policy-induced poverty. They will have little to do with poverty reduction in any meaningful sense. But they will certainly strengthen the grip of the Washington Consensus on the policy environments of recipient countries.

0 | 10