Egypt signs US$200 million loan with World Bank ...CONGRATURATION!

(NOTE THE CURRENT FIGURES (WHICH DOESN’T INCLUDE THE NEW LOANS) ABOUT THE EGYPTIAN EXTERNAL DEBTS:

EGYPT

$34.91 BILLION (30 JUNE 2011 EST.) $35.37 BILLION (31 DECEMBER 2010 EST.)

THE SOURCE IS THE CIA https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2079.html )

(SOURCE: http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/606286)

 

17 January 2012

The Egyptian government is signing an agreement with the World Bank for a loan of US$200 million, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Fayza Abouelnaga (MINISTER OF MUBARAK REGIME … LIKELY THE BABA’S BOYS DIDN’T NOTE THIS?) said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The minister explained that the loan would be allocated to the Housing Ministry for water and sanitation projects.

She also said that consultations are ongoing with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding a loan of $3.2 billion to finance the budget deficit.

An IMF delegation arrived in Cairo on Monday to discuss the loan. Negotiations started on Monday and are expected to take several weeks to complete.

Abouelnaga told reporters after the prime minister's meeting with the IMF delegation on Monday that the IMF so far has not set any conditions for the loan (SO FAR … WAIT A LITTLE BIT AND YOU WILL SEE THE SURPRISE!).

The IMF loan of $3.2 billion would extend over 18 months, after which Egypt may have the option to increase the amount of the loan or seek additional funding from other sources.

The previous army-backed government turned down an offer of $3 billion in financial assistance from the IMF last June, but since then, the country's funding problems have worsened and its currency has come under heavy pressure.

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A Dozen Reasons to Oppose the IMF and World Bank

(Source: http://www.whisperedmedia.org/reasons.html SEE THE VIDEO!)

By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

1. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs have increased poverty around the world.

Structural adjustment -- the standard IMF/World Bank policy package which calls for slashing government spending, privatization, and opening up countries to exploitative foreign investment, among other measures -- has deepened poverty around the world. In the two regions with the most structural adjustment experience, per capita income has stagnated (Latin America) or plummeted (Africa). Structural adjustment has also contributed to rising income and wealth inequality in the developing world.

2. IMF/World Bank "debt relief" for poor and indebted countries is a sham.

Many poor countries must devote huge portions of their national budgets to paying back foreign creditors -- often for loans that were made to or for dictators, wasteful military spending or boondoggle projects. The money used to pay back debt subtracts from essential expenditures on health, education, infrastructure and other important needs.

The IMF/World Bank plan to relieve poor countries' debt burden will leave most poor countries paying nearly as much as they currently do. And all of the debt relief is conditioned on countries undergoing years of closely monitored structural adjustment.

3. The IMF has helped foster a severe depression in Russia.

Russia in the 1990s has witnessed a peacetime economic contraction of unprecedented scale -- with the number of Russians in poverty rising from 2 million to 60 million since the IMF came to post-Communist Russia. The IMF's "shock therapy" -- sudden and intense structural adjustment -- helped bring about this disaster. "In retrospect, it's hard to see what could have been done wrong that wasn't," says Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

4. The IMF helped create and worsen the Asian financial crisis.

The IMF encouraged Asian countries to open their borders to "hot money" -- speculative finance invested in currency, stocks and short-term securities. That was an invitation to trouble. The Asian financial crisis resulted from the hot money brokers' herdlike decision to leave Asian countries en masse.

Once the crisis hit, the IMF made things worse by requiring structural adjustment as a condition for IMF loans. The result was a surge in bankruptcies, layoffs and poverty. In Indonesia, poverty rates rose from an official level of 11 percent to 40 to 60 percent, depending on the estimate. At one point, Indonesia's food shortage became so severe that then-President Habibie implored citizens to fast twice a week. Many had no choice.

5. The IMF bails out big banks.

The IMF bailouts in Asia, like those in Russia and Mexico, directed money to those countries largely for the purpose of paying off loans to foreign banks. Thanks to the IMF, the banks escaped significant losses for imprudent lending decisions. Citigroup, Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan were among the beneficiaries of the "Korean" bailout.

6. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs devastate the environment.

Structural adjustment demands an increase in exports and foreign exchange earnings. As a result, explains Friends of the Earth, "Countries often over-exploit their resources through unsustainable forestry, mining and agricultural practices that generate pollution and environmental destruction."

7. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Here's how Dr. Peter Lurie and collaborators explained the problem in the journal AIDS: The displacement of the rural sector under structural adjustment programs -- as imports undermine local farmers and the shift to large-scale plantations for exports further displaces the rural population -- contributes to migration and urbanization. Many men leave rural villages for work in big cities or in mines, contract HIV/AIDS from casual sex partners or sex workers, and then spread the disease to spouses in their home village. The displacement of children and young women into the cities has led to a sharp increase in commercial sex work and heightened rates of HIV/AIDS.

8. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs harm women.

Cuts in budget spending, mandated by structural adjustment programs, leave women to pick up the pieces -- with government services eliminated, women are forced to provide informal social supports for the sick and disabled. The IMF/Bank emphasis on exports has pushed women farmers to switch from growing food for family consumption to crops for exports -- and left them poorer in the process. The high interest rates associated with structural adjustment have made credit less accessible, undermining the viability of small women-owned businesses.

9. IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and Bank project loans have led to deforestation worldwide.

The export orientation demanded by structural adjustment policies has led to more forest cutting. And World Bank forest sector loans to countries around the world have done nothing to improve the situation.

"Although the [1991 Bank Forest] policy had dual objectives of conservation of tropical moist forests and tree planting to meet the basic needs of the poor, Bank influence on containing rates of deforestation of tropical moist forests has been negligible in the 20 countries with the most threatened tropical moist forests." Who said that? The World Bank's own Operations Evaluation Department, in November 1999!

10. World Bank policies have displaced millions of people around the world.

World Bank loans for dams and major infrastructure projects routinely require removal of massive numbers of people from their homes and destruction of their communities. In addition to the emotional hardship of leaving their land, the displaced people almost always find their quality of life diminished after the move. The Bank itself agrees. A 1994 report from the World Bank's Environmental Department found that, "Declines in post relocation incomes are sometimes significant, in certain cases reaching as much as 40 percent for people who were poor even before their displacement."

11. The World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) provides corporate welfare for environmentally destructive projects.

The IFC finances and provides advice for private sector ventures and projects in developing countries in partnership with private investors. Among its private sector partners: ExxonMobil, BP, Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark and Marriott. There's no reason for a public development institution, supposedly working to fight poverty, to lend its support to these well-endowed multinationals. Making matters worse, many of the private sector projects supported by the IFC, especially in the oil and gas sector, are environmentally destructive.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action, one of the sponsors of the April 16 Mobilization for Global Justice. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)

Copyright (c) 2000 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman.

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(Source: International Journal of Social Inquiry - Volume 1 Number 2 2008 pp. 113-134 Crimes of Globalization: Health Care, HIV and the Poverty of Neoliberalism in Sub-Saharan Africa*

http://www.socialinquiry.org/articles/IJSI-V1N122008%20-%20005.pdf  SEE THE FULL REPORT)

 

The Poverty of Neoliberalism in Sub-Saharan Africa

The IMF, World Bank, GATT (and its successor institution, WTO) have historically been used to advance and sustain the neoliberal experiment, especially in developing economies. This is particularly true of sub-Saharan Africa, where continuing economic crisis and increasing poverty have supported the desire for alternative economic policies to the state-led ones.

Although neoliberal policies, as currently packaged, are not the sole cause of

economic woes in sub-Saharan Africa, the desire to open up the African market and resources for Western exploitation (which earlier manifested in

trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism) was foundational to the economic

crisis confronting the continent. This foundation of exploitation has historically been aided by some home-grown crises such as corrupt and inept leadership, dictatorships, ethnic crises, civil wars and analogous conflicts, political instability, among others. In other words, African leaders have contributed to the problems of the continent through their greed, ineptitude and political rascality. However, the activities of the IMF, World Bank and GATT/WTO have particularly been devastating for the continent commonly seen as the poorest in the world. Often working in tandem with corrupt leadership in many African countries, these international financial institutions have failed to deliver the promised economic “El Dorado” to the long-suffering people of the continent. It has, in fact, been documented that the policies promoted by these institutions have actually worsened the social conditions of many Africans (see, Ezeonu, 2003, 2000; Okolie, 2003; Ezeonu and Okolie, 2001).

The IMF and the World Bank (jointly referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions) came into being in 1944 as part of the multilateral agreements entered into at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to regulate international trade and economic relations, and to help rebuild post-World War II global economies. The IMF was established to regulate international exchange rates among currencies and to maintain international financial stability by offering loans to member states undergoing balance of payment crisis. The World Bank, on the other hand, was set up to help eradicate global poverty, by aiding the rebuilding of those industrialized economies ravaged by World War II and strengthening the economies of poorer countries. This mission is succinctly captured in its motto: “Our dream is a world without poverty” (Kawachi and Wamala, 2007: 11, quoting Stiglitz, 2002; see also, Evans and Newnham, 1992). The mission of the World Bank could be said to have been realized in respect of the first objective, i.e., the facilitation of the post-war reconstruction of industrialized economies. However, in respect of developing economies, its mission has achieved minimal results – a fact demonstrated by the lingering poverty in sub-Saharan Africa where it (alongside the IMF) has dominated economic policies for more than two decades.

The structural adjustment programme was the common policy used by the IMF and the World Bank to “reform” the economies of most African countries in the 1980s and the 1990s (Engberg-Pedersen et al, 1996). This policy was aimed at creating a friendly environment for private enterprises by reducing state involvement in economic activities. Structural adjustment was, therefore, a policy framework for trade, financial and market liberalization. Trade liberalization entails such policies as the promotion of international trade through the elimination of government subsidies to export goods, the removal of import controls and currency devaluation. Financial liberalization involves the removal of restrictions or regulations of foreign capital moving in and out of the country, as well as, the liberalization of the domestic financial markets (such as the removal of government controls on interest rates and the privatization of the banking sector). Market liberalization includes the liberalization of prices that affect labour and capital (such as wages and interest rates), the elimination of price controls through the abolition of institutions as state marketing boards, and the removal of government subsidies to indigenous farmers and manufacturers. Other policies promoted by structural adjustment programmes include the privatization of state-run enterprises, the reduction in the size of the civil service (usually through massive retrenchment of workers) and the introduction of user fees in key sectors, including education and healthcare (Ezeonu, 2003: 2000).

Similarly, following the Uruguay Round Agreements of the last GATT trade negotiations which require greater liberalization of international trade, sub- Saharan African countries have become unequal partners in a global economy driven by market forces and imposed by the world’s biggest economies, especially the United States and the European Union. The institutional framework for enforcing the Uruguay Round agreements is the World Trade Organization (WTO). This institution has replaced GATT as a forum for multilateral trade negotiations. In its relatively short existence, the WTO, especially the philosophy behind its establishment, has become a subject of controversy, derision, praise and protests. Its secretive, unrepresentative, undemocratic and unfair methods of conducting its business and its double-standard approach to free trade have been sources of tensions among states and non-state actors. One of the most criticized policies initiated under the Uruguay Round of trade agreements is the TRIPS agreement. Though originally intended to encourage innovation, the TRIP agreement favors powerful multinational corporations (especially, pharmaceutical companies) at the expense of poor people in the developing world, whose access to life-saving drugs has become increasingly restricted (Kawachi and Wamala, 2007; Ezeonu and Okolie, 2003). The conditions created by the neoliberal agenda to which African countries have been subjected over the years often have devastating effects on the vulnerable population of the region, especially the poor, women and children. For instance, one criticism commonly levied against structural adjustment programmes in the region is that they were insensitive to local circumstances and that in rolling back state expenditure in such an important sector as the health care, the few health care options available to the poor have become even more limited (see, Engberg-Pederson, 1996). This situation has been exacerbated by the requirements of the Uruguay Round’s Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS) which even advances the neoliberal agenda further, and the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreements which limit the access of many Africans to drug curtails needed to manage health crisis, especially the HIV/AIDS. O’Manique (2004: 79) argues that the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, “graphically illustrates not only the fallacy of the market mechanism as the most efficient, beneficent arbiter of wealth and life chances, but also the hypocrisy of those who stand behind the ideology of free market”. He observes that the extension of the neoliberal paradigm to the developing world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, has contributed to the “deeper problem of the commodification of basic human necessities” which he argues “has life-and-death implications” for vulnerable populations. In fact, the implementation of neoliberal policies in sub-Saharan Africa has had some worrisome criminogenic (social harm) effects. Firstly, neoliberalism encourages massive retrenchment of workers from the public service and the pauperization of those who survive the retrenchment. Most of the retrenched workers have families and dependents to support. They, therefore, often desperately seek alternative employments to meet their financial obligations. Many of them, especially the men, sometimes migrate farther away from their families in search of work opportunities. While living away from their spouses, they sometimes patronize commercial sex

workers, many of whom are HIV positive. On occasional visits to their families, their spouses potentially become exposed to the virus (see, O‟Manique, 2004). (…) Thus, studies have established a close association between labour migration and HIV infection (Becker, 1990; Hunter, 1989; Brummer, 2002). In this case, such labour migration may be motivated by loss of jobs, a condition made possible by the implementation of neoliberal policy.

(…)

Perhaps no single issue has attracted more controversy in the discourse of

neoliberalism in sub-Saharan Africa than the debates over access to health

care. Firstly, neoliberal policies, such as the structural adjustment programmes, require states to download the cost of medical care to individual citizens, so as to free up government funds for debt servicing. The implementation of these policies results in budget cuts to the health sector, and the introduction of user-fees for medical services. With high level of poverty and redundancies in the public sector, citizens often find it difficult to access health care. Individuals with life-threatening diseases become the victims of this experimental economics of health commodification. With respect to the HIV pandemic, access to drugs becomes particularly problematic since “drug therapies costing $10,000 to $20,000 per year are

essentially irrelevant in countries where the total per capita spending on health care is perhaps $2 or $3” (Brigham, 1997: 48-49). For instance, it is documented that in Tanzania where more than a million children have been orphaned as a result of AIDS, the government expenditure on health care stands merely at around US$3.20 per person per annum. Meanwhile, under increasing pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this same government “spends in excess of three times more on debt servicing than it does on health care” (World Development Movement, 2006). (…)

Adjustment conditionality also encourages mass retrenchment and salary freeze in the public health sector, thereby exacerbating the public health crisis in many parts of Africa. Health professionals, who are retrenched or have poor salaries and uncertain future, often migrate in great numbers to the more economically viable countries of the West in search of greener pastures. Hogstedt et al (2007) observe that health care professionals represent an essential part of economic migrants in many Western countries, especially as the aging population in these countries creates the need for

increasing health care and services. This need has led to massive recruitments of health care professionals from developing countries, including Africa. Statistics show that foreign-trained nurses constitute 23% of the entire nursing workforce in New Zealand in 2002; 6% in Canada in 2001; 8% in Ireland in 2002; and 4% in the United States in 2000. (…)

All the countries mentioned above (Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, Mauritius, Malawi, Botswana) have experimented with structural adjustment programmes, and are today unequal partners in a global market economy supervised by powerful Western countries through their institutional surrogate, the World Trade Organization.

The World Health Organization‟s 2006 annual report documents that of the 57 countries that have the most critical shortage of health service providers, 36 are in sub-Saharan Africa (World Health Organization, 2006: 12-13).

Another area of concern regarding the harmful consequences of neoliberalism in Africa is in respect of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreed upon at the Uruguay Round of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Intellectual property rights are exclusive rights granted to inventors or innovators to prevent others from appropriating their inventions, designs, innovations, or creations without permission and/or compensation (see, World Trade Organization, 1998). At

the GATT Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, intellectual properties (i.e., all creations of the mind that have monetary values) became internationally recognised as private commodities, which deserve the same level of protection accorded private property, and member states were enjoined to formulate or amend their domestic laws in accordance with this objective. However, the implementation of the intellectual property rights in poor African countries has shown clearly the oft-harmful nature of free market economics. Confronted with an escalating increase in HIV infection and the high cost of drugs needed to manage this disease, South Africa produced generic versions of these drugs to provide cheaper access to medication to its teeming population of HIV patients. One of these drugs is Azidothymidine (AZT), an antiretroviral drug which helps to prevent the transmission of HIV from a mother to her unborn child. However, this action was challenged by US-based pharmaceutical companies which accused South Africa of patent rights violations. These companies were supported by the United States government which claimed that the country was losing more than $2.5 million per annum in royalties not paid to its pharmaceutical companies (O‟Manique, 2004: 84). It threatened economic sanctions against South Africa for using these “home-made generic versions” of the drugs to reduce the cost of treatment from $10,000 to $300 per individual, per year. A number of U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies actually went to court to block the South African government from making these cheaper versions of the drugs available to its population. The legal challenge attracted public indignation, and facing massive opposition from the international civil society, the pharmaceutical companies dropped the lawsuits. In all of these litigations, the interest of the United States government and pharmaceutical companies was profit maximization, as dictated by free market economics. It did not matter that this objective would be achieved at the expense of millions of lives and monumental misery in South Africa and other countries which benefit from the cheaper versions of the medications.

The United States government and pharmaceutical companies based their opposition to South Africa‟s production of generic versions of HIV drugs on the argument that South Africa violated the TRIPS agreements negotiated under the Uruguay Round. It was even more disheartening considering the fact that poor people, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, were often used as guinea pigs in testing the potency of most of these drugs. For example, 160 South Africans were among the 3,500 AIDS patients on whom Hoffman La Roche tested its HIV drug, Seuinivir (Johnston and Nicoll, 1997).

However, the TRIPS agreements were largely imposed by powerful industrialised countries (the US, the EU, Japan and Canada) on the rest of the world to promote and protect their economic interests. (…)

Moreover, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2004) has declared access to essential medicine as a fundamental human right! (…) (UNCHR,2004: 10-11).

Although the TRIPS agreements made some provisions which authorize member states to “adopt measures necessary to protect public health” (World Trade Organization, 2006, see Article 8[1]), these provisions, until the WTO‟s Fourth Ministerial Conference held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001, have been subject to ambiguous and controversial interpretations. (…)

It is estimated that of about 28 million people who have died of AIDS by the end of 2002, 26 million came from sub- Saharan Africa and that 18 million more people will die of the disease by 2010 (Hunter, 2003: 21 and 45).

In the words of Susan George, the politics of neoliberalism has become about “who has the right to live or does not?” (quoted in Giroux, 2004: xxii). If corporate abuses which are purely of economic nature could attract the scholarly attention of criminologists, there is no reason why the activities of the international financial institutions, which are often responsible for even greater social harm, should not come under interrogation by criminologists. The implications of neoliberalism should go beyond the concerns of economists and development experts; after all, like colonialism, which emerged in pursuit of cross-border capital and profit, neoliberal policies ravage the vulnerable population across the world.

Although the numerous genocides and atrocities committed under colonialism have often been treated as historical rather than criminological events (see, Agozino, 2003; Elkins, 2005; Rodney, 1972; Fanon, 1963), it will be dangerous for contemporary criminology to repeat this mistake in respect of the insurgent force of the global market in the developing world. (…)

 

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Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Economy/Structural_Adjustment.htmlStructural Adjustment

How the IMF/World Bank
Exploits the Globe

 

 

 

THE WORLD IS FULL OF PROVES AND EVIDENCES … LOOK BEHIND THE APPEARANCES, SILENCE THE PROPAGANDA’S VOICE … AND YOU WILL DISCOVER THE REAL WORLD YOU ARE LIVING IN.