IMF still forcing austerity on Africans

 

It’s reported that, ‘Police in Kenya have clashed with protesters rallying against a controversial finance bill that the East African country’s government is pushing through parliament. One person has been shot dead and at least 105 others have been arrested across the country, a coalition of rights groups said.

Protests broke out in Kenya in response to the government’s 2024 Finance Bill, which passed the second stage of reading.

A parliamentary committee recommended that the government withdraw some new taxes proposed in the bill, including an annual 2.5% tax on car ownership and a 16% tax on bread, following a public outcry.

The government has justified the tax measures as necessary to reduce the country’s budget deficit, but protesters argue that they will be harmful to the economy and escalate the already high cost of living.

The finance bill is in response to the International Monetary Fund’s recommendation that Nairobi make a “sizable and upfront” fiscal adjustment in its 2024/25 budget to reduce state borrowing.’

The below from SOYMB 21 April 2022

‘The conditions of nearly 90% of the International Monetary Fund's pandemic-related loans are forcing developing nations suffering some of the world's worst humanitarian crises to implement austerity measures that fuel further impoverishment and inequality, an analysis published by Oxfam International revealed. 13 out of the 15 IMF loan programs negotiated during the second year of the pandemic require new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk.This stands in stark contrast with IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva's advice to the European Union last year that the wealthy bloc should not endanger its economic recovery with "the suffocating force of austerity."

"This epitomizes the IMF's double standard," Oxfam International senior policy adviser Nabil Abdo said in a statement. "It is warning rich countries against austerity while forcing poorer ones into it."

The IMF has reverted to its highly controversial practice of requiring nations to

 impose the type of austerity measures that have exacerbated poverty and

 inequality, stymied countries' efforts to meet climate goals, fuelled global unrest,

 and even played a key role in sparking revolutions. For example, the conditions

 of a 2021 loan of $2.3 billion to Kenya compelled the country to freeze public

 sector pay for three years while mandating higher taxes on food and cooking

 gas. More than three million Kenyans are facing acute hunger as the driest

 conditions in decades spread a devastating drought across the country. Oxfam

 notes, "Nearly half of all households in Kenya are having to borrow food or buy

 it on credit."

Meanwhile, Sudan has had to end fuel subsidies, a policy that has disproportionately affected the nearly 50% of the population that is impoverished. Over 14 million people need humanitarian assistance (almost one in every three people) and 9.8 million are food insecure in Sudan, which imports 87% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.

Nine nations including Cameroon, Senegal, and Surinam must introduce or increase the collection of value-added taxes (VAT), which often apply to everyday products like food and clothing, and fall disproportionately on people living in poverty; and

Ten countries including Kenya and Namibia are likely to freeze or cut public sector wages and jobs, which could mean lower quality of education and fewer nurses and doctors in countries already short of healthcare staff. Namibia had fewer than six doctors per 10,000 people when Covid-19 struck’.

87% of IMF Loans Forcing Austerity on Crisis-Ravaged Nations: Analysis (commondreams.org)

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2022/04/austerity-imposed-by-imf.html

Cameroon: IMF make poor poorer.

Twenty per cent of the population of Cameroon live in extreme poverty.

https://worldpoverty.io/

https://worldpoverty.io/

‘President Paul Biya announced in his annual end-of-year address that prices of petroleum products in the national market will certainly increase.

The leader said on Sunday (Dec. 31st) that despite a cut, the subsidy remained a heavy burden on public coffers.

It cost the state around 640 billion CFA francs (about 1 billion dollars) in 2023 down from over 1 000 billion CFA francs (some 1.7 billion dollars) in 2022.

"You must be aware that to maintain pump prices of fuel at their current levels, which are far below those in neighbouring countries, the State has to make huge financial sacrifices to subsidize petroleum product imports," he said.

[..]we will most certainly have no choice but to reduce it further, we will ensure that the requisite adjustments do not significantly impact the purchasing power of households," he promised

The IMF has for years called on Cameroon to reduce its fuel subsidies, which are estimated to reach 2.9% of GDP in 2022.

The lender and the central African nation agreed last November to extend an Economic Program until 2025.

President Biya also vowed to intensify actions implemented to combat corruption and misappropriation of public funds which he said are essential for protecting public resources.

At the end of September 2023, inflation rate in Cameroon reached an annual average of 7.8%. The National Institute of Statistics blamed the increase on the rise in food prices and transport costs, with inflation rates of 12.8% and 11.5% respectively.’

 https://www.africanews.com/2024/01/01/cameroon-cost-of-petroleum-products-to-rise-as-president-anticipates-reduction-of-subsidy/

IMF - Exploiter

Between June 1995 and October 2006 Ghana had three arrangements with IMF under various disguise phrases such as Enhance Structural Adjustment Facility and Poverty and Growth facility. It again recently agreed with the Ghana Government a programme worth $940 million said to aim at overcoming the country's economic challenges, supporting stronger economic growth and lower inflation.

It is worth mentioning that no singular institution in our time has facilitated the devastating spread of poverty in Ghana and for that matter in other African countries than the International Monetary Fund. IMF, other Western financial institutions and donor agencies have remain mere fronts for Western profiteers instead of being a genuine partner in our development agenda that aim at taking our people out of vicious cycle of poverty.

It has always been the IMF policy to perpetually keep its 'business partners' in debts. This is the only way, it believes the business it does, that is making money for its owners, can be sustained. Over the years the IMF has hook on unto its crooked system of compound interest which has made countries in developing world perpetually poor. Such policies and strategies should be a source of concern to our leaders and those conduct business with the IMF on our behalf. The conduct of IMF and other Western financial institution is becoming increasingly questionable.

It is important that as a country we do all that it takes to wean our country from the control of IMF, the World Bank and other Western financial institutions that continue exploit our country for their comfort and pleasure. The imperialist agenda is relentless and the system they put in place to subjugate developing countries and importantly Africa countries so many years ago is still on course.

http://">http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=354930

IMF Austerity Helped Fuel Ebola Crisis

In a report published online last week in The Lancet Global Health the four researchers, professors from three British universities, accuse the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through its strict lending policies of contributing to the Ebola crisis. "A major reason why the Ebola outbreak spread so rapidly was the weakness of healthcare systems in the region, and it would be unfortunate if underlying causes were overlooked," said lead author Alexander Kentikelenis. "Policies advocated by the IMF have contributed to under-funded, insufficiently staffed, and poorly prepared health systems in the countries with Ebola outbreaks."

Kentikelenis and co-authors explain that IMF's economic reform programs forced reduced government spending, IMF may put caps on funds for government wages, including healthcare professionals, and it pushes for decentralization of healthcare systems, which "can make it difficult to mobilize coordinated, central responses to disease outbreaks. All these effects are cumulative, contributing to the lack of preparedness of health systems to cope with infectious disease outbreaks and other emergencies," they write.

Other observers have also made a connection between such economic policies and the deadly outbreak. Emira Woods, a Liberian director at ThoughtWorks, a technology firm committed to social and economic justice, in an interview with Common Dreams explained "A crisis of the proportion we've seen since the beginning of the Ebola catastrophe shows this model has failed." While years of war played a role in weakening public systems, it is the "war against people, driven by international financial institutions" that is largely responsible for decimating the public health care system, eroding wages and conditions for health care workers, and fueling the crisis sweeping West Africa today, said Woods.

Even the World Health Organization, which is tasked by the United Nations with directing international responses to epidemics, acknowledges the detrimental impact these policies have had on public health systems. "In health, [structural adjustment programs] affect both the supply of health services (by insisting on cuts in health spending) and the demand for health services (by reducing household income, thus leaving people with less money for health)," states the organization. "Studies have shown that SAPs policies have slowed down improvements in, or worsened, the health status of people in countries implementing them. The results reported include worse nutritional status of children, increased incidence of infectious diseases, and higher infant and maternal mortality rates. Depressing peoples' access to healthcare greatly increases their susceptibility to all diseases and pathologies.

The important thing to remember is that the destruction of the healthcare systems in these countries has not been accidental; it has been deliberate. This epidemic was as much a man-made disaster as a natural one. Austerity kills. Capitalism kills 

IMF, Neoliberal Powerhouse, Ransacks Sudan

Many in the international community see the International Monetary Fund as a necessary entity that provides countries with much-needed aid. However, for many activists within Sudan and its diaspora, the IMF is a neoliberal powerhouse, implementing exploitative policies that extract land, resources and wealth from developing countries in exchange for money that goes to the governing elite.
 On February 15, 2014, a week of talks between the International Monetary Fund's deputy director of Middle East and Africa and government officials in Sudan ended. The finance minister, petroleum minister and governor of Central Bank discussed debt relief and economic reforms. The IMF promised "to provide the requested technical assistance and support to the productive sectors" to encourage investment, declaring that the success of the program would directly "tackle Sudan's external debt issue."
Sudanese activist Muzan Alneel describes the IMF policies as a "systematic and well-studied approach to keep Sudan as well as other developing countries from rising to their potentials." For the past few years, the IMF has been pushing Sudan to discontinue its fuel subsidies. When the Sudan government did that last September, protests that left over 200 civilians dead spread exponentially. Muhammad Osman, who participated in those protests, says, "the more the IMF and Sudan treat democratic and economic reforms as separate agendas, the more we are likely to witness a greater civil unrest in the near future."

Full article here

Millions Of Ethiopians Flee Brutal Ruling Regime

Every year for a decade or more a million Ethiopians, 10 million and counting, have left, or fled, their homeland. While the television screens of the world have been flooded with images of North African migrants drowning off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the bones of tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees lay in unmarked graves along Yemeni shores or at the bottom of the Indian Ocean or Red Sea.

How is it you might ask, that this 10 million human tsunami remains almost unknown to the world? And why, why would ten million Ethiopians, one in every 8 people in the country, risking their lives in many cases, seek refuge in foreign, mostly unwelcoming, lands?

The answer lies in the policies of the Ethiopian regime which have been described by UN investigators in reports long suppressed with words such as “food and medical aid blockades”, “scorched earth counterinsurgency tactics”, “mass murder” and even “genocide”.

Most of the Ethiopians refugees are from the Oromo nationality, at 40 million strong half of Ethiopia, or the ethnic Somalis of the Ogaden. Both of these regions in southern Ethiopia have long been victims of some of the most inhumane, brutal treatment any peoples of the world have ever known (it has been estimated that a full half of all Oromos were wiped out during the western supported Abyssinian Imperialist colonialization during the late 1800’s by the forefathers of “Emperor” Haile Sellasie).

These past few years saw the worst drought and famine in the Horn of Africa in 60 years yet almost all of Oromia and the Ogaden affected by this catastrophe were prevented from receiving food and medical aid by the Ethiopian regime.

What country in the world is allowed to expel both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders during such a humanitarian crisis and not be roundly condemned by the international community? Only Ethiopia.

In Somalia alone the UN has admitted at least 250,000 starved to death during this famine with estimates for the victims in Oromia and the Ogaden running at least this high.

500,000 people starving to death in a couple of years and no outcry from the world? At one point up to 1,000 people a day, mostly women, children and the elderly, were dying of hunger and all we got was a New York Times best seller on the CIA’s “dirty wars” in the Horn of Africa which somehow failed to condemn this enormous crime.

Ethiopia remains the largest recipient of international, mainly western aid, in the world. Recently sources in Addis Ababa from within the offices of the IMF have sent word that Ethiopia’s import bill has reached almost 12 billion dollars a year while exports are only $2 billion. $10 billion a year in “aid”, “loans” or “investment” make Ethiopia entirely dependent on foreign good will to survive yet the world is helpless to prevent the enforced starvation of hundreds of thousand or over 10 million Ethiopians fleeing their country?

In the past ten years we have seen many reports on over two million Iraqi refugees and now another more than 2 million Syrian refugees. Yet more than twice this number of Ethiopian have become refugees and this fact remains unknown to the world?

When speaking of these crimes I am not speaking in the past tense for every day some 3,000 Ethiopians flee their homeland, almost 100,000 a month, another million or more this year. Many flee by boat from the shores of Somalia, heading for Yemeni shores and hopefully on to safer lands. How many boats sink with the loss of almost all onboard, or worse yet, have their passengers thrown overboard while still offshore will never be known. The international navies that patrol this region seem to care little for preventing the human trafficking mafias from carrying out their ghoulish trade, far to busy protecting the interests of the major shipping lines through these very same waters. Have you ever heard of a drone strike or commando raid on a human trafficking headquarters? Are any of these vermin trading in human misery ever listed on international “Most Wanted” bulletins?

Why should they, for the criminals ruling Ethiopia not only are allowed to continue business as usual but actually see their cash flow in the form of “foreign aid and investment” increased by a third since 2010 while at the same time hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians starve to death.

So next time you are confronted by images of lines of corpses along the shores of Italy remember that this is something that goes on almost everyday in the Horn of Africa but doesn't merit comment, let alone disgust and outrage by those most pious of commentators in the international media.

By Thomas C. Mountain from here

Ghana's Success - And The Failures That Come With It

According to the IMF, Ghana is a success story! The government, after faithfully
following the IMF's recommendations for shrinking the public sector, fully liberalizing the market and carrying out privatizations, has now "achieved its goals." Nowadays, the country's economy is among the world's 20 fastest-growing economies and the first in Africa! However at the same time, 4,000 schools have no facilities and students have their lessons under trees. At the clinics in the country's north there is one doctor per 161,000 inhabitants! And small-scale farmers, with no support from the state, have been left to starve, struggling alone in the free market's vast sea.


from RT here

IMF Kills

In Kenya, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees to see the doctor – so the number of women seeking help or advice on STDs fell by 65 per cent, in one of the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world.

In Ghana, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees for going to school – and the number of rural families who could afford to send their kids crashed by two-thirds.

In Zambia, the IMF insisted they slash health spending – and the number of babies who died doubled.

The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz worked closely with the IMF for over a decade “When the IMF arrives in a country, they are interested in only one thing. How do we make sure the banks and financial institutions are paid?... It is the IMF that keeps the financial speculators in business. They’re not interested in development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.”

In the 1990s, the small country of Malawi in south-eastern Africa was facing severe economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF for help. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi agreed to the ‘structural adjustments’ the IMF demanded. They ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They demanded they stop subsidising fertilizer, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers – most of the population – to grow anything in the country’s feeble and depleted soil. They told them to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people. So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. They told Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. The Malawian president protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold. The banks were paid.

The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi’s “worst ever famine.” There had been a much worse crop failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people starved to death.

At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid, because the government had ‘slowed’ in implementing the marketeering ‘reforms’ that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They concluded that the IMF “bears responsibility for the disaster.”

Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi disregarded all the IMF’s ‘advice’, and brought back subsidies for the fertiliser, along with a range of other services to ordinary people. Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Subordinating the interests of ordinary people to bankers and speculators causeds starvation .

No easy escape from poverty

People are still stuck in poverty despite the intervention of multilateral organisations.

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) were initiated in 1999 by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for the eradication of poverty in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. However, research shows that PRSPs are failing to deliver. Millions of dollars have been spent on development programmes that are having no real impact on the ground. Research suggests little or no political will to take forward policies that benefit the poor and marginalized. At the same time, the process has suffered from corruption and misuse of funds, with little accountability to the populations of recipient countries. More than 10 years on, PRSPs have thus failed to move communities out of poverty and, crucially, have largely ignored the plight of minorities and indigenous peoples, who are usually among the most marginalized and poor. The report gave two specific examples.

The Endorois of Kenya , who have been removed from their ancestral lands by successive governments, remain impoverished, with elevated levels of illiteracy, high HIV prevalence, poor health, and high maternal and child mortality rates.
The Karamoja of Uganda, the study found that they still lack basic social services and have endured marginalisation from the political, social and economic mainstream of Uganda despite a long-standing poverty reduction plan in the country.

world capitalism

"Low income countries are more exposed to the current economic downturn than previously, as they are more integrated in the world economy"

At the town of Luanshya over 3000 copper miners, directly employed and on contracts, lost their jobs at the end of January after the owners announced that the mine was no longer economically viable.

Copper mining is the most important industry in Zambia, accounting for 90% of Zambia's exports and directly employing 50,000 workers. But the price of copper has slumped on global markets, falling from a high of nearly $9,000 per ton last year to just over $3000 per ton now. Zambia has already been forced to abandon its windfall tax on copper mining, which was set to add $450m per year to its anti-poverty budget . Zambia is still one of the world's poorest countries, with 60% of the population living below the $2 per day poverty line .

The collapse of the kwacha, down 36% against the dollar so far, has spread the economic pain even more widely.

The International Monetary Fund says that, because of its dependence on copper, Zambia is one of the poor countries that "highly vulnerable to the adverse effects associated with the global recession." The IMF warns that "commodity prices are unlikely to recover while the global economy remains weak" and says that "low income countries are more exposed to the current economic downturn than previously, as they are more integrated in the world economy."