Bayan says World Bank-IMF bears responsibility for country’s underdevelopment

Kontra kaunlaran at kapayapaan.

This is how members of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan described the World Bank and International Monetary Fund during a protest in Manila. The WB-IMF is holding its annual meeting in Morocco.

May be an image of 11 people and text

Photo from International League of Peoples’ Struggle

Bayan said the WB-IMF bears major responsibility for the widespread poverty in the Philippines through its imposition of onerous loan conditionalities and so-called development programs that resulted in higher prices, stagnant wages, union busting, cuts in social spending, higher regressive taxes, and displacement of farmers and indigenous peoples.

WB-IMF has played a key role in shaping the policies of the Department of Finance and other agencies of the government that led to the sponsorship of anti-poor, anti-worker, anti-farmer and generally anti-Filipino legislation legislation such as the oil deregulation law, TRAIN law, eVAT, and rice liberalization law.

We are a showcase of the WB-IMF’s notorious track record of further aggravating the socioeconomic conditions of pre-industrial, backward countries such as the Philippines. It bankrolled the corrupt Marcos dictatorship as it introduced a wave of neoliberal programs that caused massive livelihood and job losses. The loans it provided to succeeding governments were conditioned on the implementation of trade liberalization to the detriment of local producers, privatization of state assets, and deregulation of public utilities.

Among the recent WB programs included the anti-farmer rice liberalization law and Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) project which would facilitate massive land conversions in the countryside.

After 78 years of subservience, it’s time to reject the neoliberal prescriptions dictated by WB-IMF and instead the country should adopt a development model in favor of genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization.

Categories: Statements

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