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Sign-on letter challenging the IMF (fwd)
A recent conference in Seoul drafted the following, excellent declaration.
Organizers are looking for additional sign-ons from people who did not
attend. Please send your sign-on to Soren Ambrose of 50 Years is Enough at
soren@igc.org. Thanks.
Robert Weissman
Essential Information | Internet: rob@essential.org
Dear friends:
The following letter was drafted at a conference last week in South Korea
with broad participation from Southern countries. It is meant to form the
foundation of a campaign against the outrageous policies and practices of
the International Monetary Fund.
At this time we are soliciting further sign-ons. We believe that the
indications from the last weeks are that the IMF is making a bid for more
power through the new "Poverty Reduction & Growth Facility" (known now by
its acronym PRG -- Purge -- Facility). Yet its creation is an admission
that the agency it is meant to supplant, the Enhanced Structural
Adjustment Facility (ESAF), had finally become too notorious for speading
death and poverty to be sustained. This letter is the beginning of our
effort to keep the IMF on the defensive, and to announce that the peoples
of countries damaged by the IMF, and their friends, will stand for no more
structural adjustment or other destructive socio-economic experiments.
Please send sign-ons to <soren@igc.org>. Please include organization
name, location, and individual name.
Thank you!
=============================================
8 October 1999
TO: Leaders of the G-7 Countries
International Monetary Fund Executive Directors
International Monetary Fund Management
We, representatives of civil society organizations gathered in Taegu,
South Korea to consider strategies to counter the damage done by
unregulated capital flows and the programs of the international financial
institutions, take note of the International Monetary Fund's recent
announcement that its structural adjustment programs will henceforth adopt
a focus on "poverty reduction" and will be designed in conjunction with
the World Bank, through a new facility to be known as the Poverty
Reduction and Growth Facility.
We welcome the IMF's acknowledgment, implicit in this news, that its
programs have had a negative impact on impoverished peoples in the
countries where it has imposed structural adjustment. We note, however,
that this acknowledgment comes very late: organizations like ours have
been pointing out the devastation caused by the IMF for over 15 years.
We are alarmed, also, that despite the apparent admission of its
incompetence in designing economic programs that will promote the welfare
of the greatest part of countries' populations, this announcement
indicates the following:
(1) that the IMF does not intend to withdraw from its involvement with
impoverished countries, but that, on the contrary, it will now expand its
mandate by designing and implementing poverty reduction programs;
(2) that the IMF has taken no steps to acknowledge the impact of its
policy impositions in the countries of East Asia forced to accept
"bailout" packages in 1997 and 1998; and
(3) the World Bank has apparently been chosen as the guarantor of the
rights of the impoverished, although we know that its structural
adjustment programs differ hardly at all from the IMF's in terms or
impact, and despite the confirmation of this in a recent internal Bank
report that finds the institutions paid no heed to the impact of its own
structural adjustment loans on the poor populations they effect.
Recognizing the disastrous impact of the IMF around the world, we make
the following demands:
1. That the IMF immediately cease imposing structural adjustment-style
conditions in conjunction with any of its loans or programs.
2. That consequently the proposal for the new Poverty Reduction and
Growth Facility (as successor to the Enhanced Structural Adjustment
Facility) be immediately withdrawn as irrelevant.
3. That the assets of the ESAF/PRGF be used to cancel the debts the
countries defined by the World Bank as heavily indebted poor countries
owed the IMF, and that any remaining funds be used to cancel the debts
owed the IMF by the additional countries appearing on Jubilee 2000 U.K.'s
list of 52 countries in need of debt cancellation.
4. That the IMF structural adjustment/stabilization programs imposed on
the East Asian economies in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises be
immediately discontinued.
5. That Michel Camdessus, the IMF's Managing Director for over ten
years, and his top staff, including Deputy Managing Director Stanley
Fischer, express a new spirit of accountability at the IMF by immediately
resigning.
6. That moves to amend the IMF's Articles of Agreement to require member
countries to liberalize their capital accounts be explicitly abandoned as
incompatible with the lessons of several recent financial crises.
7. That a global commission with over half its members representing
civil society organizations (with others from governments and the United
Nations) be immediately convened to determine whether the IMF shall
continue to exist and, if so, what role it should play.
Signed in Taegu by the following, with the understanding that
organizations not able to be in Taegu will be asked to endorse the
statement in the following weeks.
Focus on the Global South Bangkok, Thailand (Walden Bello)
ECONIT Advisory Group Jakarta, Indonesia (Arif Arryman)
International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID) Jakarta,
Indonesia (Tony Warowontu / Arif Arryman)
Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) Quezon City, Philippines (Jean
Enriquez)
50 Years Is Enough Network Washington, USA (Soren Ambrose)
APRO-FIET (International Federation of Commerical, Clerical, Professional
& Technical Employees) Singapore (Christopher Ng)
Third World Network Penang, Malaysia (T. Rajamoorthy)
World Economy, Ecology & Development (WEED) Bonn, Germany (Peter
Waldow)
Korean Federation of Bank & Finance Workers Unions (KFBU) Seoul, South
Korea (Lee Yongdeuk)
APRO-FIET (International Federation of Commerical, Clerical, Professional
& Technical Employees) - Korea Liaison Council Seoul, South Korea (Jay
Choi)
Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financiθres pour l'Aide aux
Citoyens (ATTAC) Paris, France (Christophe Aguiton)
Pacific-Asia Resource Center (PARC) Tokyo, Japan (Yoko Kitazawa)
SOLAGRAL Paris, France (Elsa Assidon)
People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) Seoul, South
Korea (Hee-Yeon Cho)
Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) Seoul, South Korea
(Kim Choon-y / Choi Yul)