Jamaica Observer
August 15, 2011
INTERNATIONAL financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank habitually lambast governments of developing countries for their fiscal profligacy and mercilessly chastise them for their lack of commitment to implement rapid and deep programmes of economic austerity.
The IMF is especially notorious for its lack of empathy with governments that will not cut budget expenditure and reduce public sector employment in the shortest possible time. If developing country governments fail to adhere to such austerity programmes they are raked over the coals for poor management, subsidising the poor, and corruption.
When the poor and, in many instances, the middle classes, cannot take any more reductions in their real standard of living, they often resort to anti-government riots and violence. Governments then attempt to restore order by use of their security forces and inevitably governments in developed countries rebuke developing countries for their wanton disregard for human rights.
[…]
The third lesson is that the IMF must be realistic in the demands that it makes on governments everywhere, but in particular those in developing countries. Right here in Jamaica, the alternative is an administration which has shown antagonism to the Fund’s policy prescriptions. But no country should be asked to implement an IMF-designed economic austerity programme which goes beyond the social limits of endurance.
Exerpt from Life + Debt on Impact of IMF in Jamaica
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