IMF Policies Thwart Poverty Goals - Report

If U.S. President George W. Bush is serious about his enthusiastic embrace last week at the United Nations of democracy and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to slash global poverty, he will press his treasury secretary and other members of the governing board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting here this week to stop imposing strict spending limits on poor-country governments.

That is the message of two new reports by ActionAid International (AAI), which charges that IMF anti-inflation policies and the World Bank, which is bound by them, are making it impossible for Third World governments to make much progress either in achieving MDG targets or in promoting democratic institutions.

The MDGs include achieving universal primary education, cutting hunger and poverty in half, and sharply reducing maternal and infant mortality by 2015.

"What the IMF and World Bank are doing is effectively tearing the heart out of democracy," said Rick Rowden, (AAI's) senior policy analyst. "Holding periodic elections doesn't mean much when a nation's economic direction is hammered out between the IMF, the central banks, and the finance ministries behind doors that are closed to voters."