|
monday 10 july
2000
imf- vienna
Today the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
convenes its NGO Seminar in Vienna, for
non-governmental organization's (NGO) from
the Central and Eastern European (CEE)
region, as it gears up for the much
anticipated IMF-World Bank annual general
meeting to take place in Prague this
September. Meanwhile, many of the same NGOs
which are attending the seminar are
protesting the IMF's behavior in the region
and are calling for radical reform of the
institution.
In a working draft statement circulated at
the IMF's NGO Seminar, several CEE and
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) NGOs
are calling on the IMF to withdraw completely
from structural adjustment lending and other
long-term loans, and instead to refocus on
its original mandate of economic surveillance
and short-term lending for countries with
immediate balance-of-payments problems. Such
lending, the NGOs argue, should not include
the type of conditions associated with
conventional structural adjustment loans, but
should include measures to deal only with the
immediate redress of the balance-of-payments
crisis.
In addition, the CEE and CIS NGOs are
calling for greater democratic control over
and transparency of the IMF. They are
demanding that the IMF's governing structure
be reformed so as to allow for greater
representation of borrowing governments and
to expand such representation beyond the
realm of the finance ministries. CEE and CIS
NGOs are also urging the IMF to officially
make public a list of key documents, which
are currently either confidential or only
made available to the public irregularly. In
a typical case, NGO representatives from
Slovakia released a summary of their
experience in attempting to obtain such
documents from the IMF, which failed.
NGOs are attending the IMF's Vienna
Seminar with the hope of advancing their
demands, but they fear that the seminar is
nothing more than a public relations ploy by
the IMF prior to its annual general meeting
in Prague.
"The IMF operates in a similar way as the
World Bank. The World Bank recently
established a regional NGO working group to
facilitate dialogue between the Bank and
NGOs, yet at the same time it denied NGOs
legitimate consultations in specific country
activities. Likewise, the IMF is holding NGO
seminars while at the same time denying NGOs
access to important and relevant documents."
commented Juraj Zamkovsky of the Center for
Environmental Public Advocacy in Slovakia.
"With its annual general meeting in Prague
less than three months away, the IMF will
quickly learn that it takes more than a NGO
seminar to quiet the thousands of people who
plan to be in Prague to protest the IMF's
policies and activities in the region and
around the world," he added.
For more information please contact:
Ryan Hunter
Center for Environmental Public Advocacy
Slovakia
tel/fax: +421 88 4193324
e-mail: hunter@changenet.sk
|
