Editorial: When gov't solicits IMF to manage disasters!.

The goal of the visitors, as explained at the meeting which took place in the conference room of the General Secretariat of MINFI, was to present the work plan on how the Bretton Wood Institutions will "help" the CPDM government to manage the "risks linked to disasters".

The Guardian Post leant that the Ministry of Finance was assigned to develop and adopt a disaster risk financing strategy, which will enable the country to cope with these disruptions.

The mission comes as the Board of Directors of the International Monetary Fund, on July 3 this year, completed the sixth review of the agreements under the Extended Credit Facility, ECF.

The completion of the reviews of the agreements paved the way for an immediate disbursement of 55.2 million SDRs (approximately 45 billion FCFA), which brings the total disbursements under the agreement to 483 million SDR (US$644.6 million).

The government is reported to have been finding difficulties to cope in the field of civil protection, with numerous natural disaster situations, notably floods and landslides in the Far North, floods in the coastal Regions of Littoral and South West, landslides in the West Region and even man-made disasters like collapsing buildings on risky zones.

Other challenges have included the management of significant flows of refugees from the war against Boko Haram in the Far North Region, and from the Central African crisis in the East, as well as Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, from the crisis in the North West and South West Regions.

The IMF is not only "helping" the government to manage risks, it has over the years, like in many other African countries, been "assisting" them through austerity measures to "manage" their economies.

But how successful has their "expertise" been to the beneficiary populations of the borrowing countries like Cameroon?

Cameroonian economist, Dr Louis Marie Kakdeu, in a recent interview with a local independent media organ, pointed out that "Cameroon has not been governed in the last eight years without going to the IMF".

According to the economist, "the IMF helps us to contract operating debts and not productive investment debts".

He was critical of the fact that government is always going to the IMF to look for money. According to the economist, "everything we are going to ask for from the IMF can be done without the IMF. We do not need this institution to, for example, limit waste in the execution of budgets".

He is not the only one critical of the IMF loans with punitive conditions that have seen the soaring price of fuel with dire ramification on cost of basic commodities; making living costs unbearable to the common Cameroonians.

ActionAid, an International NGO, in a report titled: “Fifty Years of Failure: the IMF, Debt and Austerity in Africa”, which was based "on new research and powerful personal testimonies from across 10 African countries," shows how, "the IMF imposes austerity policies, undermining health, education and wider development across the continent”.

“Rather than seek systemic solutions to the mounting debts crisis in Africa, and rather than exploring obvious alternatives such as progressive tax reforms, the IMF continues to enforce cuts to public spending that hurt women and disadvantaged groups most acutely," the report adds. 

The report, published in October last year, also noted that: "Despite following the IMF’s advice for decades, 19 of Africa’s 35 low-income countries are in debts distress or facing a high risk of debt distress. Most countries are now facing an acute cost of living crisis and rising debts, largely owing to external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and rising global interest rates, over which they have no control". 

It adds that: “The amount African governments are forced to spend on interest payments is often higher than spending on either education or health. Yet, there is no serious effort being made to find a systemic solution to the debts crisis. Countries have to negotiate on a one-by-one basis as if the fault is all theirs, while the people who end up paying the price tend to be those who have the least".

For the IMF to "help" struggling African countries, it should  "definitively move away from the failed neoliberal economic model and stop imposing austerity policies and constraints to public sector wage bills. Instead, the IMF should support debts cancellation and ambitious and progressive tax reforms nationally and internationally".

The report also calls on "African governments to coordinate collectively for a resolution to debts crises, based on radical renegotiation or debts cancellation, including through advancing this case in climate negotiations.

It is time African governments pursue alternative economic paths that place quality public services, social and economic justice at the heart of building sustainable and truly sovereign states".

The Guardian Post is in accord with those recommendations based on impeccable research by independent global economists.

But who is that African leader to mobilise his peers for joint African negotiations, when even a CPDM government boasting of decades of "experience" is still asking for help to address national disaster?

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3221 of Friday September 6, 2024