From Eldis:
Title: Changing IMF policies
Authors: R. Rowden
Publisher: IFIwatchnet, 2008

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This paper highlights the shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers hired in developing countries. It critically addresses current International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies with a focus on the need to change its practices in order to improve the situation.

The authors argue that 57 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, face a severe health workforce crisis. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that at least 2.4 million health professionals and 1.9 million health workers, or a total of 4.3 million health workers, are needed to fill the gap. Without prompt action, the shortage will worsen. Mounting evidence suggests policies promoted and enforced by the IMF may be preventing developing countries from spending more in their national budgets. This has important consequences for health and education budgets being constrained at unnecessarily low levels when major increases are needed. Although rich countries have provided some debt cancellation, too little has been made available for too few countries in need.

The paper calls for four key courses of action:

  • to demand that the IMF change and widely publicise revised macroeconomic restraint policies
  • to demand that other policy options for increased public spending be fully vetted and explored
  • to demand greater public stakeholder involvement in such explorations of alternative spending options
  • to call on governments to raise this issue of changing IMF policies through the Executive Board of the IMF, which approves the IMF loan programs for borrowing countries.