The IMF and the Poorest Countries: The Performance of the Least Developed Countries under the IMF Standby Arrangements

Kenneth M. Glazier was Chief Librarian Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

The Institute which published this paper is a non-profit corporation established in 1976 to provide professional, policy-relevant research on the “North-South” issues of relations between industrialized and developing countries.

Professor John Loxley, of the University of Manitoba, reviews a previous study done by John J. Donovan for the International Monetary Fund, in which Donovan appraised the performance of countries undertaking standby agreements with the fund during the 1970s. Loxley, using similar data, finds nothing to support the contention that IMF policies were effective in the period in question. The focus of public and media attention has been on the largest Third World countries, to the neglect of the least developed countries which have also had to face an acute financial crisis with debilitating effects in economic growth and human welfare. Since these less developed countries have weak economies with fragile structures, they have not had access to significant amounts of commercial bank credit.

World attention at the end of 1984 has suddenly been focused on the desperate plight of such nations as Ethiopia; this treatise gives a selection of statistics and a scholarly presentation of the back-ground issues of the least developed countries.