IMF Stabilisation and Structural Adjustment Programmes

Colette Murphy – Junior Sophister

Is the IMF guilty of malpractice in treating the symptoms of its patients, rather than
their underlying causes? In whose interest does it act, its member countries or the
powerful multinational banks? Colette Murphy offers a critical analysis of IMF
policies.

Established at the Bretton Woods Conference, one of the primary objectives of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to make loans available to member countries
experiencing balance of payments problems. Initially involved in reconstruction
projects after World War II, since the debt crises of the 1980s it has become more
involved with Less Developed Countries (LDCs). Many Sub-Saharan, Latin
American and more recently Asian countries have turned to the IMF for assistance
in addressing their growing budget deficit and debt crises. Debt rescheduling and
Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) have been implemented, which involve
IMF loans in support of policy change and institutional reform.1 This conditionality
aspect of loans and debt relief has always been controversial, but so too has the
viability of IMF SAPs as a basis for short-run stabilisation and long-run growth. Do
the draconian macroeconomic stabilisation plan and SAP work as a panacea for all
ailments, or should each country have a more tailored approach to assessing its
fundamental economic condition?

Debt Accumulation

We first need to look at why countries need to borrow and how this debt can
accumulate. Countries, both developed and LDCs, can face short-term liquidity
problems when budget deficits and balance of payments deficits can no longer be
funded by foreign exchange inflows or reserves. They normally approach
international banks, which assess the credit risk involved, lend funds and charge an
appropriate interest rate based on this risk. The government is then free to invest
these funds as it sees fit. Countries with developed economies and sufficient export-
oriented output will earn the foreign exchange necessary to service and repay this
debt without any problems.

Many LDCs, however, have an inward looking import-substitution policy rather

than an export-oriented output policy. They will also generally have an unregulated
1
Pomfret (1997)

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domestic banking system with ad-hoc lending policies, little or no risk assessment
experience and severe moral hazard difficulties2. Therefore, even with this new
injection of investment, they find it difficult to channel these funds into the traded
sector, which will boost output and exports sufficiently to both redress the balance
of payments deficit and service new foreign denominated loans. Their difficulty is
often further compounded by speculative attacks and devaluations of their domestic
currency increasing the cost of foreign denominated repayments. Such an economy
is typified by the macroeconomic problems of:

• Growing current account deficits.

• A build-up of structural debt.
• A lack of foreign reserves leaving currency open to speculative attacks and
devaluations.
• High or hyperinflation, increasing domestic prices and worsening trade
competitiveness.
• Negative real interest rates (nominal interest rate less inflation)

And by the socio-economic problems of:

• Civil and political unrest.
• A widening of the gap between rich and poor.
• Food subsidies and price distortions.

Such a lack of macroeconomic fundamentals coupled with the burden of a large

accumulation of debt leads to a solvency problem where debts exceed repayment
capacity. In such circumstances international banks refuse to roll over existing loans,
further credit is unavailable and many LDCs turn to the IMF for assistance.

IMF Intervention, Stabilisation and SAPs

Much of the criticism of the IMF is directed towards their motives, it is suggested
that fear of spill-over and contagion effects causing a threat to world-wide capital
markets is the main motivator and that “these bailout operations if handled
incorrectly, could end up helping a few dozen international banks to escape losses
for risky loans by forcing Asian governments to cover the losses on private

2
Moral hazard: risky borrowing/lending under the assumption, real or implicit, that
the government will make good any losses. The risk is therefore not part of the
decision to borrow/lend.

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transactions that have gone bad”3. However, for countries facing economic crises
the IMF is often the only organisation to which they can turn, and they have no
option but to accept whatever measures and policies the IMF dictate.

Before assessing a typical IMF stabilisation package, we must first look at the theory
behind macroeconomic stabilisation. The need for a stabilisation program arises
when a country experiences a persisting imbalance between aggregate domestic
demand and aggregate supply, which is reflected in a worsening of its external
payments position.4

There are two opposing schools of thought regarding stabilisation programs. The
orthodox approach to stabilisation concentrates on restrictive monetary and fiscal
discipline. In contrast, heterodox programs include wage and price freezes, exchange
rate pegging and deindexation measures. IMF stabilisation policies are aimed at
short-term macroeconomic stability and are oriented towards the demand side of the
economy. They reflect the monetarist view that inflation is caused when the supply
of money increases faster than the demand for it. They combine elements of
orthodox approaches, concentrating on monetary policy and fiscal discipline, with
heterodox wage and price freezes. A typical IMF stabilisation package will involve
quite extensive, possibly even excessive, use of the following:
• Reduction in the budget deficit through tax increases and reduced
expenditure.
• Controlling growth and money supply: restrictive targets are set for central
bank credit to the government and commercial banks.
• Devaluation, stimulating exports and restraining imports.
• Removal of price controls (including interest rates) and subsidies.
• Wage restraint.5

The policies that the IMF recommend to reduce the degree and duration of external
and internal imbalances that give rise to balance of payments difficulties must,
however, be set within the context of achieving and maintaining price stability and
satisfactory rates of economic growth.6 These measures have proven to work in
stabilising economies in the short-run,7 but do countries recover in the long run

3
Sachs (1997)
4
Frenkel & Khan (1990)
5
Gillis et al (1992)
6
Frenkel & Khan (1990)
7
Lenisk (1996)

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because of, or in spite of IMF intervention? Structural reforms are certainly needed
to redress the fundamentals that caused the crisis in the first place, but can a package
of measures that are right for Sub-Saharan or Latin American economies have any
relevance in East Asia? The IMF imposes the same mix of remedies for all,
irrespective of the underlying economic situation. The problems of most LDCs are
those associated with transition to a market based economy, as outlined previously,
and the inability to trade out of this situation leading to a build-up of a structural
debt crisis. Whereas the crisis experienced in Asia stemmed from the
unsustainability of current account deficits, given the nature of investments,
financial sector weaknesses, bad lending practices driven by issues of moral hazard,
overexposure to the property sector and fixed exchange rates, it was essentially a
financial crisis. The impact on the current account and balance of payment deficits
in the two economies look similar on the surface, but the causes and the underlying
economic structures in each are vastly different.

Asia’s need for significant financial sector reform was real, but not a sufficient cause
for the panic, nor a justification for harsh macroeconomic policy adjustments. Asia’s
fundamentals were adequate to forestall an economic contraction: budgets were in
balance or surplus, inflation low, private savings rate high and economies poised for
export growth8. But bailouts of the financial sector to cover both implicit and
explicit guarantees, led to governments running huge budget deficits, which quickly
led to crisis point. In 1998 Korea approached the IMF for assistance. The IMF
immediately imposed its standard package of stability and structural reform
measures. This severe macroeconomic contraction fuelled the by now growing
panic.9 There followed a plunge in domestic demand and unemployment rose from
2% pre-crisis to 8.5%, a reduction in nominal wages and employment alone caused a
12% drop in personal consumption. The restructuring of the financial services sector
and the increased unemployment led to a significant increase in government
expenditures. Outlays to assist the unemployed and support small and medium sized
enterprises and exporters hurt by the credit crunch amounted to 2% of GDP in
1998.10 This quite brutal monetary squeeze appears to have thrown the baby out with
the bathwater. Korea could probably have got by with a modest slowdown in
growth, no credit crunch, and a realistic time horizon of a few years to complete its
financial reforms.11

8
Sachs (1997)
9
ibid
10
OECD (1998)
11
Sachs (1997)

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Conclusion

Theory suggests that IMF programs are conducive to macroeconomic stability in the
short-run.12 However the evidence to date of their application within economies as
diverse as Tanzania, Brazil, Indonesia and Korea, shows that there is a need for
wider economic debate regarding the viability of a single solution to fundamentally
different problems. The people most affected by these problems have little
knowledge or input and, while the instincts of the IMF are often correct, they can
sometimes be wrong, with serious consequences.13 These countries may be showing
the same symptoms but are hardly suffering from the same ailment.

Bibliography

Frenkel, J.A. & M.S. Khan (1990) “Adjustment Policies and Economic
Development” in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, pp. 815-8, August.

Gillis, A., Perkins, D. H., Roemer, M. & D. R. Snodgrass (1992) Economics of

Development. W.W. Norton and Co.: New York.

Lensink, R. (1996) Structural Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa. Longman: New

York.

Meier, G. M. (1995) Leading Issues in Economic Development. Oxford University

Press: New York.

OECD (1998) Economic Outlook. OECD: Paris.

Pomfret, R. (1997) Development Economics. Prentice Hall: London.

Sachs, J. (1997) “IMF is a power unto itself”. Available from

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/asia/AsiaCrisisSachsViewFT1297.html

12
Lensink (1996)
13
Sachs (1997)

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