The international monetary fund and the World Bank are basically organizations who are there to help countries in dire need of help. This can be considered a basic assumption and understanding of the role of these organizations. However, since these are organizations, they tend to provide services in such a manner that they see their own benefits first as they cannot support any country at the cost of their own survival. This is especially true in the case of the World Bank (Tisdell, C., 2004). The amount of interest and other overheads charged on the loans given to the nations in need is simply off the scale. Already the countries are suffering from shortage of cash due to mismanagement of the economy and these organizations put them in more trouble by attempting to help them at first but then making them pay the huge overheads.
But as far as I see it, the biggest problem of the developing countries is the corrupt employees who manage the funds given to the countries by these organizations. Take the current president of Pakistan for example. The history of the guy is that he stayed in prison for more than 10 years. He is a known criminal and he even tried to commit suicide while in captivity. He did not even complete his formal education properly. When he came to power last time, he was accused of huge money laundering as he has transferred millions of dollars from the economy in his own personal Swiss Bank account. But, as we can all see, he is the president of Pakistan. No one has tried to stop him because everyone is involved in the crimes he is committing. Everyone gets their share of dollars and they keep quiet about it. The government even seized the right of independent judiciary so no one could question his actions or accuse him of anything! How much more evidence does one need to prove that the country is being robbed of its bare assets than this? Same is the case with India. There are so many small gangs and mobs thriving inside India that the government cannot do anything about them. So much so that even the police are owned by those mobs! The government cannot do anything even if they want to. The major reason is that the people influenced by these mobs deny the rule of the government so to keep them at bay and stop them from starting a civil war, the government chooses to control these people through the gang leaders (Michie, J. & Archibugi, D., 1997).
Coming back to the point, the IMF and World Bank have very stringent policies in place to control the return of the loan and aid they provide to these countries so they themselves do not go bankrupt (Chossudovsky, M., 1997). This has caused even more pressure on the economy of these countries. These countries will certainly be better off without their help in many cases. Let me give you an example. Every time you see a person drowning, you should never help him completely out of the water if you really want that person to swim. You only throw him something he can hold on to and not drown. Then he should figure out ways to come back to dry land himself, and believe me, he will find some way because his life depends on it. If you pull him out every time he is about to drown, he will become accustomed to it and never try to save himself. This leads me to my biggest point in my whole argument. The IMF and World Bank are basically the type of organizations who do not want the welfare of these countries. This is why they help them out so much. These organizations know that if they offer full help to these corrupt nations, they will never refuse and hence they will never learn to ‘swim’. This means that the organizations will never stop giving loans, and, will never stop making money off the poor guys!! Hence the only reason that the western world has set up this ‘trust fund’ for less developed countries is so they cannot progress and any progress they do make goes to the western world in the form of interest.
Remember the dark ages in Europe? Did anyone come to help out these nations? NO! And see the result today. The people there helped their own nations and developed them to the point where they can dictate other nations. This is the classic case where America has produced the most weapons in the world and is the biggest terrorist in the world but is promoting its image in front of the world that it’s fighting against terror by bombarding innocent nations who cannot even afford food let alone develop terrorists!
In conclusion I would just like to say this. The IMF and World Bank might he helping these nations in times of need, but this is not their mission. Their real mission is to earn off poor countries so they can survive in the world as well. If they really want to help these nations, they should keep a closer watch on the money they provide to these countries by seeing detailed plans on how the money will be spent before they present it to the governments. On day will come when it will have sucked out so much of these poor countries that they will not even afford to pay the principal loaned to them let alone the interest and then these organizations will see their own steep decline which they ignored by keeping their eyes fixed on short term profits.
Works Cited
Chossudovsky, M. The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms. Published by Zed Books (1997)
Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Treasury Committee. Globalisation: The Role of the IMF. Published by The Stationery Office (2006)
Michie, J. & Archibugi, D. Technology, globalisation and economic performance. Published by Cambridge University Press (1997)
Tisdell, C. Economic Globalisation. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing (2004)