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Saturday, September 09, 2006
Ong: Pressing for external audit of debts
By Ted Aldwin Ong
AMONG the main call of debt campaigners in the scheduled International People's Forum in Batam, Indonesia, is the open, transparent and participatory external audit of the lending operations and related policies of the International Financial Institutions, beginning with the World Bank and IMF.
The anti-debt movement all over the world is now involved in preparing and conducting country-level independent Citizens' Audits of Debts claimed from South countries as well as calling on South governments to conduct transparent, open and participatory Government Audits of these debts which includes the Philippines.
These audits are aimed at examining the origins and causes of the debt problem, taking stock of effects and impacts, bringing to light the dubious and illegitimate character of the debts, identifying responsibility and accountability, and establishing and strengthening the basis for urgent changes in national policies on the debt and related issues.
This is a challenge to the IFIs to subject themselves to similar independent audits of the loans they have released, their lending policies, processes and operations, and the terms and conditionality that have accompanied these loans in order to take stock of its effects and impacts. Such audits should look into the culpability and accountability of these IFIs, and assess what restitution and reparations must be made.
The international financial institutions have recently been stepping up efforts to portray themselves as champions of good governance, including the announcement of renewed efforts and strategies to fight corruption.
The anti-debt movements though is posing challenge to these institutions beginning with themselves and examine how they have been involved in creating and exacerbating the problem of corruption. External, independent audits of their loans, lending operations and conditionality should include this question. Further, corruption must be seen as a systemic problem that also involves the private sector, especially transnational corporations.
Part of the demand also being forwarded is for these IFIs to stop the imposition of conditions and the promotion of neoliberal policies and projects. The conditions attached to the loans and programs of the IMF and World Bank have succeeded in restructuring the global economy.
The impact of restructuring our economy is imminent in the various sectors that underwent or are continuing to undergo restructuring such as the power and water industry.
The widespread use of "structural adjustment programs" from the early 1980s in countries with significant debt, poverty, and financial problems has forced most of the South countries' economic policies to ape those of the industrialized countries; regardless of how inappropriate those policies may have been for the countries' development needs.
Because of the imposition of neo-liberal policies on countries desperate for access to credit, peoples across the South now confront economies oriented to export production rather than providing for local markets, devastated manufacturing sectors, a large percentage of economic actors in foreign hands, valuable public assets privatized, health and other social sectors crippled by decades of de-funding, environmental resources devastated by over-exploitation, small farms and businesses wiped out by denial of credit and subsidies, and massive unemployment.
Our struggle against debt domination is waged in large part to win freedom from the conditions that indebted governments are blackmailed into accepting. Our government under the Arroyo regime is beholden to this situation. This is the reason why that under the current regime, the country's debt further ballooned.
I will be presenting the more specific demands of people's in the South under the auspices of the Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement for Debt and Development in my next column in order to enlighten the public of the similar demands that our brothers in other parts of the globe are forwarding.. For comments, email them to tao.ssi@gmail.com
(September 9, 2006 issue)
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