Advocacy letter on IMF consultations framework by global civil society
25 March 2008
South-North civil society call for the IMF to establish a consultations framework in its operations, premised on the automatic and timely disclosure of information.
A group of 17 civil society organizations representing 10 countries and several international networks have sent an advocacy letter to the International Monetary Fund calling for the establishment of a consultations framework within all processes and programs of the Fund. An effective consultations framework needs to have firm guidelines in place, such as the timely disclosure of information to all external stakeholders as well as a sufficient amount of lead time when notifying stakeholders of upcoming programmatic and policy decisions. The letter highlights the unacceptably secretive manner in which the IMF has discussed the reformulation of its quota-based voting shares as well as the clear lack of any substantive information or report on the Fund's internal restructuring processes, outlined only in one “interim work program” document by IMF Managing Director Strauss-Kahn that
identified five working groups.
The letter, provided below, calls upon the IMF to define a framework for public consultations which includes the automatic disclosure of documents. Such a framework should apply to all, or most, of the IMF’s operations and processes, ranging from country-based negotiations on surveillance; technical assistance, and/or loans; staff policy design; reviews of policies and programs; institution-wide reforms, and Executive Board decision-making. In addition, IMF officials should also encourage countries’ governments to seriously involve external stakeholders in these processes. Consultations within countries should include government ministries, such as health and education, independent economists and academic specialists, national civil society and labor unions.
Too often, IMF member countries undergoing annual surveillance (Article IV reports), technical assistance, or lending programs are only consulted vis-à-vis closed-door meetings between the IMF and the country’s Ministry of Finance and Central Bank. IMF mission teams and country-level staff must fundamentally alter the way they conduct their business in order to realign national policy making with democratic and participatory decision-making processes. To do so, the Fund must initiate and prioritize explicit and open consultations with a wide range of external stakeholders, such as line ministries (including health, education, and women’s ministries), independent economists and academic specialists, national civil society, and trade unions. These broad and meaningful consultations should occur before a country’s macroeconomic policies are set. Consultations should occur within countries where external stakeholders have expressed interest in consultations, as well as in Washington, D.C. IMF Mission Teams that visit countries to review loan agreements or conduct annual surveillance must participate in explicit and open consultations with a wide range of external stakeholders, not just with the nation’s Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank.
As a first step toward a framework for informed public consultations, the IMF should publish the final reports of the five working groups in the Interim Work Program, scheduled to conclude by the Spring Meetings in 2008. This step would be a step toward strengthening transparency and the right to access information toward a practice of maximum disclosure in project, loan, and internal policy documents.
The groups that collaborated on this advocacy initiative are: Action Aid International; African Network on Debt and Development; BanglaPraxis, Bangladesh; Bank Information Center (BIC), U.S.; Bretton Woods Project, U.K.; Center of Concern, U.S.; European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD); Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), South Africa; Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection/Jubilee-Zambia, Zambia; Latin American Network on Debt, Development and Rights; New Rules for Global Finance Coalition, U.S.; Oxfam International; Social Watch, Uruguay; Third World Institute, Uruguay; Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development, Uganda; Voices for Interactive Choice & Empowerment, Bangladesh.
Read the full text of the letter:
Advocacy letter on IMF consultations framework by global civil society March 25, 2008 (Acrobat pdf, 63 KB)
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