The World Bank and International Monetary Fund's "Structural Adjustment's Program", S.A.P.S. (that's us), which contain conditions required in order for a country to get a loan, insist on making governments decrease their role in their economy and privatize everything while eliminating subsidies in favour of the "free market".

Around the world, this has resulted in sell-offs of government-owned (people-owned) companies and massive lay-offs. For example, in Mozambique, the IMF and World Bank ordered the removal of an export tax on cashews which resulted in 10,000 adults, mostly women, losing their jobs to child labourers in India.

SAPs also result in less social services and education spending. The IMF and World Bank force countries like India to focus on cash crops and the extraction of raw materials in order to turn the raw goods over to trans-national corporations instead of focusing on subsistence farming.

SAPs have also caused the elimination of environmental and labour standards (at the urging of U.S. and European investors) and farmers' land to be taken over by foreign companies, leading to much greater levels of poverty. The number of Russians who live in poverty has risen from two million to sixty million since the IMF came to post-Communist Russia. The average person's income fell by about half within four years of the implementation of IMF programs there. At the same time, trans-nationals were extracting massive amounts of wealth from Russia.

The IMF and World Bank have also demanded the implementation of user fees. In Mexico, this meant introducing tuition for university, so the opportutnuty which existed to enable individuals to get out of poverty through education, is elliminated.

When the IMF and World Bank require countries to privatize health care, it renders many essential services unavailable to the poor, mostly women and children. Furthermore, loans almost exclusively go to large-scale agri-businesses predominantly run by men, rather than the small-scale agricultural production with which women feed their families.

The IMF and World Bank's primary role has become to bail out trans-national banking institutions and channel funds earmarked for the alleviation of poverty to wealthy individuals and nations through crippling debt repayments.

As Ralph Nader recently stated, the 300 richest individuals in the world have more wealth than the 3 billion poorest. It has become very clear after their decades of existence, for whom the IMF and the World Bank work. It does not take a PHd in economics to figure that out.

Along with the World Trade Organization (the target of protests last year in Seattle), the IMF and the World Bank form a kind of triumvirate among international economic organizations. Their operations deserve our attention every bit as much as the WTO. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were established in 1944 at the historic conference of 44 nations at Bretton Woods, N.H. Their mandate was to help with post-war reconstruction by fostering international cooperation in financial and economic development. 

Although originally based on progressive liberal principles, both institutions by the 1970s had fallen under G-7 (predominantly U.S.) influence. They have since become the "enforcers" of free trade, unfettered financial mobility, and other market-driven neoliberal policies, particularly in the Third World. With devastating results. 

Most developing countries sooner or later feel the need to apply to the IMF or the World Bank for loans. Such loans are given only on condition that the recipients agree to implement severe structural adjustment programs (SAPs). These SAPs force indebted countries to adopt a wide range of "free market" policies, including cuts in social programs, the privatization of public agencies and services, switching agriculture from domestic to export crops, and of course dropping all restrictions on foreign investment and ownership. 

The IMF/World Bank SAPs have increased poverty levels around the world. In the two regions most affected by these programs--Latin America and Africa--per capita income has stagnated, and in many countries has fallen sharply. Governments have been obliged to cut health, education, and other social spending and divert the money to their debt repayments. The SAPs have also further widened the gap between rich and poor in the developing world. 

The IMF and World Bank have driven post-communist Russia into a deep economic depression. Before they imposed their SAPs on that country, 2 million Russians were living in poverty. That number has now soared to 60 million--a peacetime slump of unprecedented scale. The recent financial crisis in Asia was also created and worsened by the IMF, whose introduction of speculative finance caused the problem, and whose SAPs then triggered a surge in layoffs, bankruptcies and poverty. 

Although Canada has not applied for loans from the IMF or World Bank, it has not been free from their influence. The IMF, acting on behalf of the U.S. and the financial markets, exerts a great deal of influence on all governments, including Canada's. It issues reports on Canada nearly every year, and its advice or warnings are carefully heeded. Last fall, for example, the IMF told Finance Minister Paul Martin to give priority to tax cuts in his 2000 budget, and to devote only "moderate" increases to health care and education. Martin dutifully complied. 

IMF/World Bank policies have been disastrous for the environment. They fund projects in which countries are encouraged to over-exploit their natural resources through deforestation and strip-mining developments. The result is life-threatening air and water pollution. Many such projects also often involve the enforced relocation of millions of people. 

Women tend to be disproportionately hurt by IMF/World Bank programs. Social spending cuts force women to provide social assistance to those deprived of government help. Higher levels of stress within families harmed by SAPs has led to increases in violence against women. The IMF/World Bank emphasis on growing crops for export has pushed women farmers away from growing food for family consumption, and left them poorer in the process. The high interest rates often dictated by SAPs have also made credit less accessible for small women-owned enterprises. 

The IMF and World Bank have so far not been held accountable for the effects of their brutal policies on billions of people around the world. That may change on April 16th in Washington, D.C., where many thousands of people opposed to these powerful institutions come together to challenge their "profits-before-people-and-the-environment" approach and demand sweeping democratic reforms. 

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