The Times (London), May 29, 2002 IMF accused of causing food crisis in Malawi
The International Monetary Fund has denied allegations that it was partially responsible for the gathering famine in Malawi. The Washington-based institution has been blamed for putting pressure on President Muluzi to sell off maize reserves to save money on storage and to repay foreign debts at the very moment when the harvest failed. Aleke Banda, Malawi's Agriculture Minister, and Western aid agencies, including the Save the Children Fund, have claimed that the IMF and Western donors pushed Malawi into selling the reserves. The row has thrown a spotlight on to the seemingly irreconcilable goals of sound financial discipline required by the IMF among developing countries in exchange for financial assistance and the need to maintain expensive food surpluses to avert sudden food crises. Malawi sold off virtually all its stock of 167,000 tonnes of maize, the staple diet for most of the 11 million inhabitants in the impoverished Central African country, in August 2000. This was after unprecedented floods earlier in the year had ravaged production.The floods, followed by drought, left Malawi with a shortfall of about 600,000 tonnes and made the hardest-hit of the six Southern African countries -along with Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho -that are struggling to cope with their worst food emergency in almost five decades. Food shortages in Malawi are now so severe that farmers are sleeping in their fields to protect their withering crops from thieves. People caught stealing maize are said to have had their hands and ears chopped off, a sign of mounting violence and social disintegration unprecedented in the former British colony. ==== Members [of the WTO Secretariat] pointed out that Malawi's agricultural policies aimed at food security and rural development. They questioned the impact of communal land ownership on agricultural development and planned reforms in the sector, mainly in land tenure. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tpr_e/tp189_e.htm ==== Accordingly, the government's strategy to further enhance the role of the private sector in agriculture rests crucially on the accelerated divestiture of its assets. To this end, the government will prepare a time-bound program for the commercialization and privatization of ADMARC by end-March 1999, and begin implementing the process shortly thereafter. Beginning with the 1999/2000 crop season, the government will no longer be involved in direct procurement, import, or sale of maize, and ADMARC will operate on purely commercial terms. http://www.essentialaction.org/labor_report/malawi.html ==== The Times (London), February 2, 2002, Saturday Blair's great African sell-off Privatisation of Attlee's aid agency hits 'poorest of the poor' TONY BLAIR'S new mission to heal "the scar" of Africa risks being undermined by his Government's plan to sell off the British organisation that has pioneered investment in the Third World. MPs, aid organisations and environmental groups have expressed alarm at the manner in which the former Commonwealth Development Corporation, which has been renamed CDC Capital Partners, has been diverted from its founding principles. Measures taken to prepare CDC for partial privatisation have seen the scrapping of loans for African agricultural projects, as well as the closure of offices in some of the continent's most deprived countries, including Uganda, Malawi and Ivory Coast. . . The CDC was set up 50 years ago by Clement Attlee's postwar Labour Government. In 1997 the Prime Minister announced plans to sell off up to 60 per cent of CDC, in a partial privatisation that Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, said would release funds for more aid projects. Since then CDC has sought to rid itself of its long-term agricultural investments, which have average returns of 6 to 8 per cent. Mr Gillespie hopes to attract new private capital by channelling funds instead into telecommunications, shopping malls, banks and energy firms, which can offer rates of return of 25 per cent. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
