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International Financial Institutions (IFI)
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By the same author
War on Want
By the same author
PSIRU
7 April 2004 by War on Want, PSIRU
This report looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services.
It focuses specifically on the sectors of water, electricity, and healthcare, in six countries: Colombia; El Salvador; Indonesia; Mozambique; South Africa; and Sri Lanka.
It examines the impact of the requirements and policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and other agencies including regional development banks, the European Commission (EC) and donor countries. It includes a specific examination of the various ways in which the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) supports privatisation in these services.
It concludes that the pressures for privatisation have been strengthened through new structures of ‘globalised aid’; that they create serious limitations on independent decision-making by developing countries, and generate some strong political responses; and that policies of development banks and donor agencies, including DFID, should be reviewed to remove such pressures and ensure that policy-making in developing countries is determined by local democratic processes.
Source: War on Want.