October 1 to 12, 2004: Worldwide Days of Resistance To the IMF & World
Bank

As the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank celebrate their 60th
anniversary this year, movements from all over the world are mobilizing to
express vigorous opposition to their policies and operations. The occasion
of the Spring Meetings of these twin institutions in Washington, DC last
April was a high point of these initiatives, with protest activities held
in the U.S. capital, as well as in various other countries.

But our efforts to take advantage of the 60th Anniversary of IMF and WB to
protest their role in the domination of the South and the escalating
poverty, marginalization and exclusion of our people have just begun. We
are now calling for coordinated actions on October 1 to 12, 2004 of the
peoples, and to dub these days of October as the Worldwide Days of
Resistance to the IMF & World Bank. Let us urge all groups, people's
organizations, social movements and networks to organize activities and
mobilize during these days.

Our global protests will coincide with the Annual Meetings of the IMF and
the WB on October 1 to 4 and continue through October 12, a day of
mobilizations in the Americas around injustices perpetuated on indigenous
peoples since the landing of Columbus in the Caribbean Islands over 500
years ago.

We urge you to sign and circulate the attached manifesto and ask other
groups to do so.

Let us work together to make these Days of Resistance a resounding cry for
the end of the hegemony of these institutions. Let us mobilize on these
days for a massive expression of unity of the peoples of the North and the
South in the struggle to build a new economic order founded on the
economic, political and social empowerment of all people to live fully
human lives.

This campaign action is being coordinated by Jubilee South and the IFI
OUT!, a global network/movement of resistance against international
financial institutions, including the IMF, the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the
African Development Bank.

On the 60th YEAR of the BRETTON WOODS INSTITUTIONS let us all shout:
IMF and WORLD BANK OUT!

We will be writing to you again in the coming days for updates and
exchanges on your plans of action and activities.

Yes to Life, No to IMF-World Bank!

Lidy B. Nacpil
International Coordinator
Jubilee South

***

END 60 YEARS OF DESTRUCTION:

IMF-WORLD BANK OUT NOW!

Sixty years ago, delegates from governments of 45 countries met in Bretton
Woods, New Hampshire, USA, and laid out a blueprint for redesigning the
world economy. For the first time, globally binding agreements and
institutions were forged, supposedly in the spirit of international economic
cooperation. In truth, the meeting, dominated by the victors of World War
II led by the United States, paved the way for a handful of powerful and
wealthy Northern countries and governments to dictate to all of humanity the
shape of the world economy as they saw fit.

Founding the Institutions, Ruling the World Economy

The Bretton Woods Agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or simply, the
World Bank (WB), giving a mandate to these twin institutions to maintain a
global order and economic climate conducive to capitalist development.

The IMF would enforce the agreed rules of a global financial and monetary
system with the U.S. dollar as the international currency, striking a
balance between a rigidly fixed currency exchange system and an unfettered
floating rate system. The World Bank, on the other hand, would extend loans
to war-torn economies and poor countries for use in "development projects"
and the "alleviation of mass poverty".

The structures and decision-making processes that were established reflect
the grossly imbalanced power relations between nations. Just like private
corporations, voting power and rights of members are proportional to their
"shares". Not surprisingly, the biggest owner of the IMF and the World Bank
is the United States.

Several changes have taken place since the founding of the IMF and World
Bank in 1944. Rules governing the world economy were adapted to emerging
problems and new requirements of the global capitalist system. Steps were
taken to enhance and reinforce the powers of these institutions over
countries of the South, including the formation of new entities under the
IMF and World Bank and the establishment of their regional counterparts -
the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and Inter-American
Development Bank.

For the greater part of the 20th century, the needs and requirements of the
global capitalist order to thrive and prevail have been defined by these
institutions. In turn, the paradigm and policies of these institutions have
been determined by its most powerful members, the wealthiest countries of
the world led by the United States.

Debt and Destruction

As oil prices rose in the early 1970s, many of the developed countries cut
back on demand for goods from South countries to pay for oil and reduce
balance-of-payments deficits. Non-oil-producing South countries reeled from
the impacts of skyrocketing oil prices, coupled with the fall in the demand
for and trading prices of their key commodities.

International banks and financial institutions, on the other hand, found
themselves flush with enormous dollar surpluses from the quadrupling of the
prices of crude oil. Driven by the need to invest the surplus capital, they
took advantage of the economic vulnerabilities of South countries and
aggressively peddled loans. Relentless and unscrupulous, creditors showed no
regard for internal democratic processes and national laws. Loans were lent
irresponsibly to corrupt governments and to dubious projects that were
non-viable, damaging to communities and the environment, or tainted with
fraud and onerous terms. Creditors also liberally extended loans to private
corporations requiring government guarantees, conveniently ensuring
repayment with taxpayers' money.

More insidious, politically motivated reasons also pushed the high wave of
lending in the '70s and '80s, as Northern governments used the IMF and the
World Bank to promote their politico-military and economic interests in the
South. In the face of strengthening liberation movements in the South, IMF
and World Bank loans propped up repressive dictatorships and authoritarian
regimes loyal to the United States, such as Marcos' of the Philippines,
Mobutu's of Zaire, Suharto's of Indonesia, and the successive dictatorships
in Argentina. The ill-gotten wealth that these despots and their cronies
pocketed through onerous debt transactions are still being paid for by
peoples of the South today.

The external debt of South countries grew enormously through the '70s,
eventually leading to a debt crisis in the early 1980s. A deep global
recession ushered in the '80s with the demand for export commodities of
South nations declining and interest rates soaring as a result of the
floating exchange-rate policy. Only with Mexico's threat of default in 1982
was the gravity of the debt crisis publicly acknowledged by the
international community. By then, many South countries were teetering on the
brink of financial collapse or going through severe economic contraction.

In the succeeding years, debt payments of South countries took huge and
continually expanding shares of government spending, resulting in the
deterioration of basic services and public utilities. A vicious cycle set in
as governments borrowed in increasing amounts in order to service their
debts.

The IMF, WB and creditor governments led by the G7 countries implemented
various "debt relief" schemes. These programs were partly in response to
pressure from debt campaigns and public opinion and so were cleverly
designed to appear to be in aid of debt-strapped South countries. More
importantly, however, these schemes were aimed at keeping the countries in
the treadmill of paying their debts, continuing their borrowings, and
sticking to the economic conditionalities. Thus, rather than provide real
relief, the schemes redounded to far greater benefit for the creditors.

For instance, the Brady Plan of the early 1990s which targeted countries hit
by the debt crisis of the '80s such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and the
Philippines, transformed a large part of commercial debts into bonds,
instruments which involve stronger payment guarantees and whose terms cannot
be renegotiated. Instead of paving the way for debt reduction, it allowed
creditors to cut their losses, turn the debts into paper that could be
traded in the secondary markets to generate profits, and improve the debt
indicators of target countries so they could lend to these countries again.
In short, the Brady Plan led to more borrowing and larger debts. Less than
a decade later, Argentina fell into another debt crisis, and other countries
are showing signs of following in its wake.

The IMF and WB unveiled the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) debt-relief
program in the mid- 1990s. Despite its re-launching as the Enhanced HIPC in
the late '90s, this scheme has been little more than a mechanism for
creditors to clean their books and collect payments from countries that were
about to default or were already defaulting. HIPC also exacted compliance
with structural adjustment programs as requisite for eligibility, and
eventually recycling SAPs in the year 2000 into Bank- and Fund-mandated
"poverty reduction strategy papers", or PRSPs.

Despite these debt-relief schemes, the external debt of the countries of the
South came to US$2.4 trillion by the year 2002, up from US$580 billion in
1980. Total debt payments made by South countries came to about US$4.8
trillion for the 22-year period.

Conditionalities, Structural Adjustment Programs, and PRSPS

With the debt of South countries ballooning to mind-boggling proportions,
the IMF-World Bank hold even greater sway over South governments. Using debt
as leverage, the Fund and the Bank and their regional counterparts compel
South countries to implement economic policies as conditionalities attached
to loans and as requirements for positive credit ratings, ratings that the
international financial community uses to determine a country's access to,
and the terms of, lending.

These economic conditionalities not only include policies deemed necessary
to ensure loan repayments, more importantly, they require strategic
restructuring of South economies to give free movement to capital and goods.
South countries are thus laid bare to even greater plunder by transnational
corporations, international banks and other financial institutions, and
Northern governments. At the same time, the economies of the South become
more oriented to and integrated with the global economy, relying more and
more on the demands of the world market, becoming even more dependent on
international investments and credit. This process, called globalization, is
the direct consequence of the policies of the IMF, the World Bank and their
regional partners.

Since the late 1970s, the IMF has been requiring borrowing countries to
implement Fund programs that emphasize restrictive fiscal and monetary
policies, including those that cover taxes, budget and public spending,
interest rates, foreign-exchange rates, international reserves and money
supply. In particular, countries undergoing balance-of-payments crises are
compelled to implement austere measures known as "stabilization" policies.

The World Bank, on the other hand, has been exacting compliance with
broader, longer-term structural adjustment programs that include trade and
finance liberalization, deregulation of industries, and privatization of
services and utilities. The Bank not only imposes these policies on South
countries as loan conditionalities; it finances the implementation of these
policies and provides the expertise and technical assistance required.

The impacts of these adjustment policies are well-documented. Numerous
testimonies, evaluations and studies bear witness to their disastrous
effects:

*Debilitating IMF policies have led to dramatic reductions in public
spending on social services and consequently to the severe deterioration of
public health, education, housing programs; massive lay-offs of public
sector employees; more regressive tax systems; increases in interest rates;
and, higher prices of basic commodities.

*The structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the regional
development banks have led to destruction of local enterprises and farms;
loss of livelihoods and jobs; decline in incomes, increasing prices of
goods; narrower access to health care, education and decent housing;
dislocation of entire communities, especially those of indigenous peoples;
widespread damage to the environment; and, erosion of sovereign control over
natural resources and development policies. Women and girls in particular,
additionally disadvantaged by gender discrimination, experience even greater
marginalization and impoverishment.

In recent years, these international financial institutions have been
relentless in their push for the privatization of water and power services.
With the red carpet practically rolled out by the Fund, the World Bank and
the regional development banks, the biggest private water and power business
empires in the world are being assured lucrative business environments by
client South governments.

Country-level experiences on power and water privatization clearly disprove
the claim that privately-run firms are more efficient and provide cheaper
services. Continuously escalating rates and thus increasingly reduced public
access to services, unfulfilled promises of infrastructure improvement and
consequently greater risks to public health, malleable regulatory systems,
shady financial and management transactions and processes, and extraordinary
business perks are common characteristics of privatization that demonstrate
the exact opposite. As it turns out, the privatization thrust that these
institutions have made contingent to the release of loans have simply
provided big multinationals another way to make guaranteed profits at the
expense of millions of consumers.

Typical of their propensity for duplicity, the IMF-World Bank officially
concedes that some mistakes have been made and recognizes some of the
"social impacts of adjustment." However, they have given no quarter in the
continued pursuit of their programs and policies. Instead, these
institutions merely performed some face-lifting to structural adjustment
programs in the year 2000, re-packaging them as PRSPs required for HIPC
eligibility and for loan approval. The policies have remained essentially
the same, with the dual purpose of ensuring loan repayments and giving
industrialized capitalist countries free rein over the economies of the
world.

World Wide Days of Resistance: October 1 to 12, 2004

The IMF-WB pay lip service to poverty reduction, civil-society
participation, democracy and transparency, while continuing on this path of
destruction. We cannot allow the poverty generation and crises creation by
these institutions to continue. Hence, we urge the struggles, campaigns and
mobilizations against these institutions in both the South and the North to
intensify and to move forward with a renewed sense of urgency.

To mark the 60th year of these Bretton Woods institutions, let us unite and
mobilize in a Worldwide Days of Resistance to the IMF-World Bank and their
partner institutions during the first two weeks of October 2004. Our global
protests will coincide with the Annual Meeting of the IMF and the WB on
October 1-4 and continue through October 12, a day of mobilizations in the
Americas around injustices perpetuated on indigenous peoples since the
landing of Columbus in the Caribbean Islands over 500 years ago.

Let us work together to make the Days of Resistance a resounding cry for the
end of the hegemony of these institutions. Let these days mark the
beginning of intensified struggle. Let us mobilize for a global expression
of unity of the peoples of the North and the South in the struggle to build
a new economic order founded on the economic, political, and social
empowerment of all people to live fully human lives

Abolish illegitimate debt!

Stop the privatization of education, health, housing, water and power
services!
Stop the imposition of neoliberal economic policies!

End 60 years of destruction! IMF-WB OUT NOW!

SIGNATORIES:

Please sign up by submitting your name in the space provided in
www.ifi-out.org or www.jubileesouth.org or by sending a message to
[email protected] or to [email protected]