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The International Monetary Fund in Economic Development: Equality and Discrimination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Extract

While the demand for economic development by underdeveloped countries has a long history, two landmarks call for brief comment: 1960, when a massinflux of newly-independent underdeveloped countries lent political strength to their clamours; and 1973, when the spectacular rise in oil prices became a potential weapon of the developing countries. The chief political forum of the latter has been the General Assembly of the United Nations, but battle has also been done in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), chief forum on international trade. Some concessions have been wrested from the developed countries, but progress in the two chief fora of public international finance, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, has been slow. Both of these international institutions have become the focus of manoeuvre between the developing and the developed countries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1982

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References

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10 Keynes's precise words on that occasion were “… such discretionary rights as might be accorded to the Fund should be framed to distinguish between the case of a developed country managing its affairs prudently so as to avoid recourse to the Fund, and that of an irresponsible small country anxious to exploit a new source of borrowing”. See Horsefield, J. K., The I.M.F., 1945–1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, Vol. I, 7677.Google Scholar

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