IMF
Cites Trend Against
"Cross-Border Integration," Like
Davos It's All About
Trump
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 16 – The International
Monetary Fund released its
World Economic Outlook Update
on Monday it said "recent
political developments
highlight a fraying consensus
about the benefits of
cross-border economic
integration."
As at Davos, can
you say, Trump without Trump?
The IMF for
now is speaking selectively. When
IMF spokesman Gerry Rice held
a on- and off-line press
briefing on January 12, the
first one in more than a
month, Inner City Press
submitted questions about
Yemen, Chad, Sri Lanka,
Mozambique and structural
adjustment, as well as asking
for updates on South Sudan and
Burundi.
Now on
January 13 there is this, on
Yemen, to Inner City Press
from an IMF spokesperson:
"The humanitarian
and economic fallout from
conflict is devastating; the
conflict has weakened
significantly economic
activity, destroyed
infrastructure, and
constricted availability of
basic goods and services. We
continue to work with
international partners and
donors to help assure the
availability of basic food and
to facilitate resuming payment
of civil servants as well as
financial support to the
poorest. The IMF stands
ready to re-engage as soon as
the conflict is resolved to
help restore macro stability,
rebuild institutional
capacity, and jump-start
growth."
It's said
that UN enovy Ismail Ould
Cheikh Ahmed met with Yemen's
Central Bank Governor... in
Saudi Arabia.
The
IMF has, a day later, not yet
answered questions on Chad or
Mozambique. Inner City Press
has asked:
In Mozambique it
has been suggested that the
government could simply not
recognize the guarantees for
the $2 billion “secret” debt
that would be enough to
“reduce the total foreign debt
enough to allow negotiation
with the IMF.” What is the
IMF's response?
“MF-led
structural adjustment reforms
increase protest risks in
Chad” - what is the IMF's
response?
In Sri
Lanka, weeks after the
IMF indicated the country's
foreign reserves were below
comfortable levels the
government now plans to try to
raise $1.5 billion through a
domestic bond sale. Does the
IMF think this is a good move?
On IMF conditions
reducing health care spending,
the Universities of Cambridge,
Oxford and the London School
of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine “found that for every
additional IMF condition that
is 'binding' - i.e. failure to
implement means automatic loan
suspension - government health
expenditure per capita in the
region is reduced by around
0.25%.” What is the IMF's
response?
Well, what is
it? Rice on January 12
said the IMF's Cyprus resident
representative is at the UN's
Geneva talks, and previewed a
presentation by David Lipton on
"Africa," and a trip there by
Christine Lagarde, including to
the Central African Republic,
locus of French impunity. Watch
this site.
***
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