ABSTRACT
The suspicion has been aroused in the minds of many in the debtor countries that International Monetary Fund (IMF) terms have not been developed in the interest of the debtor country concerned, but rather in that of the creditors in the developed world. It is essential to use the great opportunity of the negotiation of a near-total remission to pursuade the debtor government to adopt certain essential reforms for the benefit of their own country. Hitherto, the IMF has imposed its own conditionalities and structural adjustment programmes attached to each tranche of financial assistance, even when that tranche was only the temporary expedient of a rescheduling of part of the debt. In the fight against the dangers of communism, anything which smacked of socialism was an anathema to the financial administrators of World Bank and the IMF in Washington. Therefore conditionalities have placed a great deal of emphasis on privatisation.
