IMF
Ignores Press Qs on Chad, Sri
Lanka & Mozambique, Calls
Out Jeane Afrique, Trump Echo
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 12 – When the
International Monetary Fund's
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
Chad, Sri Lanka, Mozambique
and structural adjustment, as
well as asking for updates on
South Sudan, Yemen and
Burundi: there were none.
Instead, Rice used one of the
few online questions he took
to declare the questioner,
Jeane Afrique, to have been
“wrong” in its reporting that
the IMF favors a devaluation
of the CFA.
Some
wondered how this differed
from US President Elect Donald
Trump declaring CNN to be
“fake news” -- especially
since unlike Jim Acosta of
CNN, Jeane Afrique was not in
the room to ask or try to ask
any follow-up questions.
(Jeane Afrique has also
reported that Trump may tap
Peter Pham as Assistant
Secretary of State for Africa
- we'll see.)
But
other than the slap-down of
JA, the IMF did not answer
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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