International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a neoliberal financial organization. Although it is a global organization, 38% of it is controlled by France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and United States. The IMF and its fellow Bretton Woods institution, the World Bank, have been led by a European and a US national since their inception, in what has been described as a "gentleman's agreement" despite demands for a merit-based, transparent process to be instated.

Upon membership in the IMF, member countries deposit a sum of money known as a quota subscription, denominated in special drawing rights (SDR), which determines how much money they can draw from the IMF, with the sum also determining the voting power of the member country. In return for financial assistance from the IMF, borrower countries must implement a set of economic reforms, typically referred to as structural adjustment programs (SAPs). The reforms stipulated by the IMF typically impose austerity measures, increase privatization, and weaken social services. The requirement to implement SAPs in order to receive loan installments is referred to as conditionality. Historically, conditionality was enforced primarily through compliance with SAPs. However, the IMF also began requiring a "letter of intent" to be submitted by governments requesting IMF loans, with prior actions, quantitative performance criteria, and structural benchmarks to be approved for a loan.

In his 100-page resignation letter from the IMF, former IMF senior economist Davison Budhoo described the extensive and systematic statistical fraud used by the IMF to impose its policies on developing countries, and explained that the consequences of these policies led to massive poverty and starvation. In the letter, Budhoo wrote that the IMF's policies are made in "utter disregard to local conditions" and lead countries to "self destruct" and "unleash unstoppable economic and social chaos" and also compared the IMF's structural adjustment policies to a "terrorist attack". He also stated that the routine policy packages of the IMF "can never serve, under any set of circumstances, the cause of financial balance and economic growth" and that "the ill-gotten, inadvertent power that we revel in wielding over prostrate governments and peoples - can only serve to accentuate world tensions".

History

Founding and early years

The IMF and World Bank, also known as the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs), were set up at a meeting of 44 country delegations in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA in July 1944. The idea behind this conference was ostensibly to help rebuild the international economic system after the Second World War and to promote international economic cooperation. They were based on the ideas of US Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau, his chief economic advisor Harry Dexter White, and British economist John Maynard Keynes. While the establishment of these institutions was presented as a supposedly apolitical effort, they served as a method to defend and expand the reach of western capitalism in the face of a potential challenge from the Soviet Union, and to promote US interests in particular. The Soviet Union was present at the conference but chose not to join the IMF.^:37

Economist Ismail Sabri Abdalla has summarized that the Bretton Woods conference was "essentially a conference about the monetary and financial problems of the industrialized capitalist countries" and that the IMF was not conceived to deal with the specific financial problems of Third World countries. Abdalla states that "[t]he choice made at Bretton Woods was, in the final analysis, the expression of power relations between the USA and its allies; it contributed greatly to the consolidation of US hegemony and a dominance—dependence relationship between the USA and the other countries which joined the IMF system." He explains that because the US dollar was held outside of the US as an international means of payment and reserve asset, the US was in a position to increase its money supply without giving rise to significant inflationary pressures at home, unlike other nations which could only deal with inflation for short periods before imposing deflationary measures.^:37-41

In its early years, the IMF established a training institute which was attended by central bank officials from the global South.^:41

In 1964, the Group of 77 (G77) emerged at the end of the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The G77's aims were intended to enable global South countries to articulate and promote their collective economic interests, enhance their joint negotiating capacity, and promote South-South cooperation—considerations which had been effectively unaddressed at the Bretton Woods conference twenty years prior, when many of the concerned countries were still under colonial rule. In the following years, the G77 would continue advocating for policies intended to advance the development of the global South, eventually calling for the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO).

The IMF's scheme of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) was established in 1969. As distribution of SDRs was based on quotas, the majority went to the industrialized countries, with Third World countries receiving about 25% of the first issue.^:43-45

1970s

A flowchart depicting petrodollar recycling.

From the Second World War until the 1970s, Keynesianism had held influence in bourgeois economic thinking and international economic regulation was enacted through the system of the gold standard. However, various events in the 1970s would come to influence significant changes in economic policy in the imperial core. Among some of the significant events were the USA's abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, marking the end of the Bretton Woods system, as well as the significant oil price rises by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which would lead to profits being deposited in dollar-denominated assets and thus a period of increased lending by the imperial core to developing countries at low interest rates, followed by a raising of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve which would cause unsustainable debt issues for the countries who had borrowed in USD, a debt crisis which the IMF would play a role in managing. Events such as the CIA-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile in 1973 would also be influential in the development of neoliberalism, serving as a "test bed" for the ideas of the "Chicago school" of Milton Friedman which would eventually come to dominate imperial economic policy.

The 1970s saw the end of the Bretton Woods system with the US abandoning the gold standard in 1971, under which the external values of foreign currencies had been fixed in relation to the US dollar, which had been convertible into gold at the price of $35 per ounce. In March 1973, the G10 approved an arrangement in which six members of the European Community tied their currencies together and jointly floated against the US dollar, thus abandoning the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in favor of a system of floating exchange rates. This is regarded as the end of the Bretton Woods system as conceived at its founding in 1944, although the Bretton Woods institutions remain in operation.

Also significant in the 1970s was the oil price rises by OPEC, which resulted in large profits for oil producers, with these oil surpluses largely deposited in dollar-denominated investments, expanding the financial sector of the imperial core. These petrodollars were then lent to developing countries at low interest rates. In 1979, US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates, a period referred to as the Volcker Shock. For developing countries who had borrowed loans in US dollars, the raising of interest rates created a substantial debt problem, which the IMF would come to play a major role in managing. This debt crisis is generally considered to have begun in 1982, when Mexico declared that it would no longer be able to service its debt, followed by various other countries around the world declaring a similar inability to repay.

1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s and 1990s, the policies advocated by the imperialist-led international financial institutions were inspired by the so-called "Washington Consensus" and focused on promoting neoliberal policies, implemented mainly via Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). According to the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, the mid-late 1980s was the high point of SAPs, when 64 countries had one in place.

The shift to the neoliberal policies of the 1980s has been regarded by some as part of the imperial core's attempts to roll back the achievements of the global South in the 1960s and 1970s at building Southern unity as well as to neutralize the successes of popular struggles which threatened to undermine the West's economic interests and political hegemony, with the IMF and World Bank functioning as part of a system to "discipline"^:25 developing nations and to reverse their growing tendency to adopt development strategies which favored strong state leadership in the economy, protection of the domestic market through tariffs, and restricting or closely monitoring the activities of multinational companies.^:23-25 The shift away from earlier project-based lending toward structural adjustment loans gave imperialist nations greater leverage over the political and economic structure of borrower countries.

A sovereign debt crisis erupted in many developing countries the 1980s after the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 1979, resulting in a "lost decade" of development, especially in Latin America and Africa. The IMF and World Bank played a prominent role in overseeing this crisis, and countries were pressured into accepting structural adjustment programs. By 1983, indebted countries were sending more money to the imperial core than they were receiving in loans and aid.

Neoliberal shift

The turn toward the neoliberal policies of the Washington Consensus in the 1980s may be contrasted with earlier approaches, in which project-based lending was more commonly used rather than adjustment-based lending, and state intervention in maintaining economic stability and development was a norm, employing concepts such as import substitution industrialization (ISI) and the use of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While such practices are sometimes described as having failed or are blamed for poor economic performance in the global South, it may be noted that imperialist-led institutions have been described as having instituted a financial "invisible blockade" against countries which pursued socialist or resource nationalist development strategies, using such tactics to purposely foment coups d'etat against leaders like Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana (in 1966) and Salvador Allende in Chile (in 1973), after which right-wing, pro-West governments would be installed and IMF approvals and access to monetary aid and other benefits would open up, while the process of privatizations of state enterprises and selling off of national resources began. In 1980, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere alluded to this phenomenon of being blocked from other financial resources when refusing IMF conditions, stating that when poor countries refuse the IMF's conditions they hear a "threatening whisper" that not only will they not be able to access IMF money, but they will not be able get any "other" money or credit until they reach an "understanding" with the IMF.

Project-based loans, rather than structural adjustment loans, had also been a prior norm before the development of structural adjustment loans. As former IMF and World Bank economist Davison Budhoo describes, until the formation of the International Development Association (IDA) in 1960, loans from the World Bank "were almost entirely project approach loans" rather than adjustment-based loans. He explains that project-based loans are far more limited in their effects on the sovereignty of a country and the that "the scope for abuse in use is minimal", as "project approach lending involves a known and unambiguously defined regulatory role over a very limited area of the national economy" such as a power plant or steel complex, and that under this approach, the borrower country's more general political and economic structure are "effectively insulated from Bank staff decision-making processes" and therefore, "the aid relationship becomes predominantly non-antagonistic, with a high degree of consensus as to what is to be done, and how to make Bank loans effective and to further the process of economic transformation."

In 1988, describing the internal attitude of the IMF at the time of this neoliberal shift, IMF whistleblower Davison Budhoo wrote that the IMF's aim was essentially to have the global South "'privatised' or die":

About five years ago President Reagan effectively told us to go out and make the Third World a new bastion of free wheeling capitalism, and how we responded with joy, and with a sense of mission! Of course the entire strategy for propagating Third World economic rebirth into unfettered free enterprise was finalized and explicitly stated in the Baker Plan of 1985 and in the eligibility criteria to Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility to the 62 'poorest' countries of the world. Thus everything we did from 1983 onward was based on our new sense of mission to have the south 'privatised' or die; towards this end we ignominiously created bedlam in Latin America and Africa in 1983-88.

As historian Alois S. Mlambo describes, the Reagan administration aimed to "discipline developing nations" with the IMF and World Bank going into action to "implement the Reagan counter-revolution" by introducing structural adjustment loans, "which were designed to reverse the growing tendency in developing countries of promoting a strong state leadership in the economy, protecting the domestic market through tariffs, restricting or closely monitoring the activities of multinational companies and demanding a New International Economic Order."^:25 Mlambo writes:

It was, after all, in this period that Third World countries were demanding a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and a New International Information Order and were calling for a strengthening of various United Nations agencies. This, combined with the defeat of the United States in Vietnam and the successes of popular struggles in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and elsewhere 'frightened some Northern elites'. Even more threatening to Northern interests were efforts in many developing countries to jettison, or at least modify, the free-market system through the introduction of statist planned economies, import-substitution strategies and strict monitoring of the activities of transnational corporations. These trends threatened to undermine the Western countries' economic interests and political hegemony in the developing countries and, therefore, had to be neutralised. Spearheading the counter-assault on developing countries' growing assertiveness and statist intervention in the economy was the United States government under the right-wing leadership of Ronald Reagan which adopted a multi-faceted approach ranging from military interventions i.e. Granada; covert support for surrogate armies i.e. Angola; and economic manipulation through international multilateral agencies like the IMF and the World Bank which the United States and other powerful countries of the West controlled.^:23-24

However, Mlambo points out that the issue did not begin with Reagan, as, since their inception, "the World Bank and the IMF have always tried to ensure that the industrialised countries of the West continue to have easy access to cheap raw materials and to the markets of the developing countries for the disposal of their finished products [...] the agenda of the IMF and the World Bank has always been that of maintaining the Old International Economic Order of laissez-faire and comparative advantage which led to the prosperity of the industrialised countries and the underdevelopment of the peoples and economies of the developing world."^:25

Debt crisis

A chart published by UNICEF in 1992 depicting net financial transfers between industrialized and developing nations between 1980-89.

The IMF and World Bank played a prominent role in overseeing the sovereign debt crisis that erupted in many developing countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa in the 1980s following the 1979 Volcker Shock. Developing countries in Latin America and Africa were pressured into adopting these institutions' neoliberal Washington Consensus policies, therefore undertaking measures which fueled prolonged recession and a "lost decade" of development in those regions. On the other hand, some nations and regions in Asia undertook a development strategy in contrast to the Washington Consensus, with heavier state involvement, leading to a dramatic divergence in economic outcomes among developing countries during the 1980s.

A United Nations report summarizes the debt crisis in Latin America in three phases: first, the austerity phase; second, the period of the Baker Plan of 1985 in which conditionality shifted to structural adjustment programs of privatization and encouraging foreign investments; and third, the period of the Brady Plan, which was announced in 1989.^:60

By 1983, more money came from the indebted states to the imperial core than went out as loans and aid. Author Vijay Prashad writes of this phenomenon that, in other words, "the indebted countries subsidized and funded the wealthy nations." He adds that by the late 1980s, the indebted states sent an average of $40 billion more to the G7 than the G7 sent out as loans and aid. In 1992, a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) stated that "Each year, the repayment of capital and interest amounts to approximately $150 billion - roughly three times as much as the developing world receives in aid" and that the debt crisis "has now reached such a point of absurdity that the developing nations are having to transfer financial resources to the industrialized nations rather than the other way round. When all transactions are taken into account [...] the net effect is that the developing world is now transferring $40 to $50 billion a year to the industrialized world." Prashad writes that by 1997, "the total debt owed by the formerly colonized world amounted to about $2.17 trillion, with a daily debt-service payment of $717 million." He further states that between one-third and one-fifth of most indebted states' gross national product was spent on debt service.

By 1998, a Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) article commented that "[v]irtually all developing countries [...] have implemented or are in the process of acceding to SAPs."

Movements against debt and austerity

As the level of odious and unsustainable multilateral debt of developing countries grew throughout the 1980s and continued into the 1990s and 2000s, countries were faced with having to divert larger and larger proportions of their spending away from social spending and poverty reduction in order to service their debts. At the same time, the effects of structural adjustment programs took hold, also cutting away social spending as well as increasing market liberalization and privatization. Faced with the material hardships and threats to national sovereignty arising from the effects of structural adjustment and unsustainable debt servicing, a variety of protests, organizations, and movements gained momentum in opposition to the debt crisis and against austerity policies, as well as against the IMF and World Bank themselves and against the related World Trade Organization (WTO) which also traces its origins to Bretton Woods. As observed in a 2014 article on TruthOut, dozens of nations around the world experienced waves of protests (deemed by some as "IMF riots") spurred by the austerity of IMF and World Bank programs:

As IMF austerity programs spread across the globe, poverty followed, and so too did protests and rebellion. [...] [P]rograms by the IMF and World Bank facilitated the massive growth of slums, as the policies demanded by the organizations forced countries to undertake massive layoffs, privatization, deregulation, austerity and the liberalization of markets – amounting, ultimately, to a new system of social genocide. The new poor and displaced rural communities flocked to cities in search of work and hope for a better future, only to be herded into massive urban shantytowns and slums.

On the topic of odious debt in South Africa, Trevor Ngwane, speaking in 2000, summarized the effects of odious debt incurred by the apartheid regime: "Many of those debts were used to buy weapons and suppress the people during apartheid. So we are paying twice for it—once with our lives, and now with an inability to fund critical social services." As the debt crisis progressed and IMF/World Bank austerity spread, movements for debt relief, debt cancellation, and outright debt repudiation drew increased public attention. One such movement which gained notoriety in the late 1990s was the Jubilee 2000 campaign, initiated in 1998, which was a broad movement that called for the cancellation of countries' unpayable debts by 2000.

Protests against the IMF, World Bank, and the related WTO and against neoliberalism mounted in several countries throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, though there had also been protests in earlier decades. This included events such as one of the largest strikes in Haiti in 1997, called for by the Anti-International Monetary Fund Committee and the 1999-2000 protests against World Bank mandated water privatization in Bolivia sometimes called the "Cochabamba Water War". A non-exhaustive list of some other events include protests in Tunisia and Morocco in the mid-1980s, in Sudan in 1982 and 1985, in West Germany in 1988, in Jordan in 1989 and again in 1996, mass protest in Venezuela in 1989, waves of strikes in Argentina in 1999, a general strike in Nigeria in 2000, and a referendum in Brazil in which one million people answered "yes" to stopping implementation of IMF policies.

IMF creates HIPC initiative and PRSPs

In the late 1990s, the IMF and Word Bank eventually created the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative as a veneer of reform, initially as HIPC I in 1996, with its criteria later being reworked in HIPC II or "enhanced HIPC" of 1999. The HIPC initiative supposedly intended to bring the debt of countries the institutions defined as HIPC to a sustainable level if the countries could meet a complex set of criteria. A 2003 secretariat briefing paper by the G-24 chapter of the Group of 77 described the HIPC initiative as suffering a variety of shortcomings, particularly highlighting its "inappropriate eligibility criteria and inappropriate debt sustainability indicators" and pointing out that many countries with equally high poverty and debt levels to those designated HIPCs were excluded from its criteria, and noted in the conclusion that the HIPC initiative had not been able to secure long-term debt sustainability.

The original program of the HIPC initiative consisted of two phases, the first phase being three years of implementing of an "enhanced structural adjustment facility" (ESAF) which included typical IMF conditions such as privatization of state industries, privatization of utilities, and decreased domestic spending. At the end of phase one was a stage called the "decision point" in which the IMF and World Bank would determine how much debt relief that they would potentially provide after yet another three years of continuing the ESAF reforms, ending with what was called the "completion point" after six years, at which point the debt relief would be provided. In other words, the IMF and World Bank did not commit to cancelling debts unless the debtor country reached the "completion point" of the HIPC initiative, leaving countries under the continued pressure of six years of debt payments while they simultaneously instituted six years' worth of structural adjustments, with countries' efforts at poverty reduction being weakened by the ESAF's conditions. Furthermore, among the relatively few countries which did reach the completion point to receive debt relief, some still had to wait for months for the creditors to arrange the distribution of the funds.

As of the 1999 revision of the HIPC initiative, the "completion point" became "floating" and thus could potentially be achieved earlier than six years and eligible countries could access some interim debt relief before the completion point. However, as one article noted in 2007, "the revised HIPC also provokes new allegations of creditor arbitrariness because the IMF and World Bank now unilaterally determine whether a country has reached the decision or completion point without any concrete criteria or outside input."

The 1999 revision also included the replacement of ESAF by the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), modeled around the concept known as a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). By 2004, 77 countries had PRSPs. The so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) of PRSPs is presented as a reformed and less "draconian" form of adjustment, yet such programs still contain the same neoliberal elements as SAPs.

COVID-19 pandemic

From January to October 2020, the IMF gave COVID-19-related loans to 81 countries, including 41 in Africa. The majority of these loans required countries to cut government spending or wages. 14 African countries were required to implement austerity measures in 2021 and 19 more had to by 2023.

A 2023 report by Human Rights Watch, analyzing 39 loan programmes from 2020 to 2023 and affecting a combined total of over 1 billion people, found that the austerity imposed by the IMF on recipient countries has led to an erosion of human rights, disproportionally affecting people with low incomes. This is despite the presence of social spending floors - a minimum that a country must spend on social services - which the IMF falsely claims helps protect the most vulnerable in societies from cuts in public spending. In reality, these social spending floors are improperly and vaguely calculated and many people face increased hardship regardless.

Structural adjustment programs

The concept of "structural adjustment" refers to programs which aim to restructure the economy of a country. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are characterized by liberalization and deregulation of the economy as a condition to receive IMF loans, a stipulation referred to as conditionality. The IMF began calling such programs SAPs in the 1980s. SAPs have long been observed to result in devastating impacts and to reproduce colonial relationships, drawing criticism and opposition from a variety of segments of society. It has been noted by the Bretton Woods Project, a civil society organization critical of the IMF and World Bank, that though the IMF and World Bank claim that their work contributes to global welfare and the fulfillment of human rights, these institutions "lack clear evidence" for their claims and have faced objections by a myriad of human rights experts.

Typical SAP elements include an array of neoliberal measures, such as privatization of state-owned enterprises, devaluation of the national currency, removal of subsidies, cuts to social services, promotion of the production of exports, removal of tariff barriers, removal of restrictions on what can be owned by foreign businesses and banks, and reduction of government spending, among other measures. Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs), outlined through Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a more recent form of IMF program developed in the early 2000s, have been evaluated by some to contain the same elements as SAPs in terms of liberalization, institutional reform, and cost recovery, despite rhetoric which attempts to paint them otherwise.

IMF whistleblower Davison Budhoo described the purpose of SAPs as being to replace any remotely "people-oriented" economic policy with free market policy in every country of the global South, saying that "when we talk of 'structural adjustment' we have nothing else in mind but an irresistible motivation to implement, in every country of the South, the following political agenda: to call an immediate and complete stop to economic policies that can be interpreted as being in the slightest degree 'socialist' or 'populist' or 'people- oriented', or weighted, however slightly, in favour of the poor and economically underprivileged, or based on the collective, social consensus of the population concerned" and to replace such policies with "Reaganite free-wheeling capitalism". Furthermore, Budhoo wrote that the IMF's program "is nothing but a hotchpotch of irreconcilable and conflicting elements and objectives" that "reduces economics to a farce" and "is the recipe for comprehensive disorder and all enfolding disintegration of the fabric of national life - economic, political, social - without reason or rationale or sensitivity to the aftermath."

An article in FPIF observed that SAPs "are driven more by neoliberal ideological principles than by objective evaluations of a country’s specific economic problems and potential" and, as a result, generate an array of economic, social, political, and environmental problems, noting elsewhere in the article that in their wake, SAPs have "bankrupted local industries, increased dependency on food imports, gutted social services, and fostered a widening gap between rich and poor." An article published in the Journal of Comparative Economics notes that when IMF programs fail, the IMF puts most of the blame on errors in implementation and "surveillance gaps" rather than the programs themselves, and that when the IMF's own research shows that programs failed, they call for more reforms and tighter surveillance, and that in the "few cases" when the IMF "admits that the impact of its adjustment programs 'was less-growth friendly than anticipated' [...] it insists that they will be 'paying off' later".

Currency devaluation

Devaluation refers to the deliberate downward adjustment of the value of a country's currency. Currency devaluation raises the cost of imports while lowering the cost of exports. Typically this is done with the stated intention of lowering the cost of a country's exports to make them more competitive.

Economist Ismail Sabri Abdalla observes that the currency devaluation often implemented through SAPs has a different effect on industrialized countries than it does on developing countries. Abdalla writes that the increase of exports intended by devaluation is only realistically achievable in countries which are already industrialized and therefore do not have to significantly invest due to the size of existing production capacities and the availability of stocks. In contrast, countries which are less industrialized are not able to quickly adjust to a currency devaluation and raise their exports because they need to import equipment and intermediate products in order to expand their production; devaluation raises the cost of these essential imports, which is reflected in the final production costs, "thereby putting a brake on exports instead of stimulating them."

Historian A.S. Mlambo provides an example of this dynamic in a book on Zimbabwe's adoption of ESAP:

[D]evaluation increases the cost of importing finished products and productive inputs necessary for economic development. This is because, as the prices of the country's exports continue to fall, the cost of acquiring manufactured inputs from the industrialised countries continues to rise. For instance, in 1980, Zimbabwe could buy a tractor from abroad for approximately 100 bales of cotton. By 1983, however, the same tractor cost 130 bales of cotton. Similarly, Tanzania could purchase a seven-tonne truck for 38 tonnes of sisal in 1972, yet by 1982, it took 134 tonnes of sisal to purchase the same type of truck. Primary producers are thus caught in a no-win situation, the IMF and World Bank's alleged benefits from devaluation notwithstanding.^:9

As currency devaluation increases the cost of imports, it can also create significant difficulties for countries which rely on substantial food imports. Food production for domestic consumption can also be impacted by farmers pivoting toward cash crops for export, reducing domestic food production at the same time that importing food becomes more expensive.^:11

Devaluation can also contribute to the phenomenon of brain drain.

By country

Argentina

Argentina is the country most in debt to the IMF as of 2025 reporting, as it has been in previous years, having taken on the largest IMF loan in history in 2018. According to market researcher Intelpoint, Argentina accounts for 28.2% of the IMF's credit outstanding, with SDR 31.1 billion. In 2024, Visual Capitalist reported that Argentina’s debt to the IMF was equivalent to 5.3% of the country’s GDP. Previously, in 2006, Argentina had paid off its $9.81 billion IMF debt.

In 2018, the IMF granted Argentina a $56.3 billion loan, causing austerity and privatization. The loan was given the year before an election to favor right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri, an ally of Donald Trump. The loan was above the maximum limit established in the IMF's bylaws and the IMF agreed to the loan despite IMF staff reports that the loan was likely to be unsustainable.

Ecuador

Ecuador is the fourth-most indebted country to the IMF as of 2025 reporting.

Egypt

As of 2025 reporting, Egypt is the third-most indebted country to the IMF. Egypt accounts for 7.8% of the IMF's credit outstanding, at SDR 8.63 billion.

In 1977, the Egyptian government under Anwar Sadat, pursuing a policy of economic liberalization (in an open-door policy called infitah), sought to fulfill prerequisites to receiving IMF and World Bank loans. The government thus announced the imposition of IMF-recommended austerity measures, which included cuts to government subsidies on basic foodstuffs, with the price of bread, sugar, tea, cooking oil, and rice announced as being set to rise between 25% to 50%. The government also announced its intention to cancel state employee bonuses and pay increases. Although this was presented as a proposed measure, it was an executive order that took effect immediately, with food prices increasing on the same day as the announcement. This resulted in hundreds of thousands of people engaging in mass demonstrations across multiple cities from January 18-19, variously referred to as the "Bread Riots" or "Bread Intifada". The protests were some of the largest in Egypt since the 1952 revolution, with the army being called in to intervene and the imposition of a curfew. Over the course of events, 79 people died, 556 were injured, and over 1000 people were arrested. By the night of January 19th the government revoked the austerity measures, reinstating the food subsidies.

Indonesia

The IMF caused a banking crisis in Indonesia that decreased GDP by 14% and increased poverty by 40%.

Pakistan

Pakistan is the fifth-most indebted country to the IMF as of 2025 reporting.

Jamaica

By 1976, Jamaica had a deficit of $231.2 in Jamaican dollars. The IMF made Jamaica devalue its currency and increase exports. It also forced the government to cut wages, end subsidies and price controls, and privatize industry. The IMF austerity increased the prices of various food items by 71% to 285%. Real wages dropped by 35% in 1978 alone, and the unemployment rate was 30% in 1980.

Sierra Leone

The IMF made Sierra Leone devalue its currency, which also decreased the cost of its minerals, including diamonds. Increased diamond extraction led to a conflict that killed 70,000 people and displaced 2.6 million.

Sudan

In 1978, Sudan under Gaafar Nimeiry signed the first of several IMF stabilization programs, resulting in the creation of a IMF/World Bank program consisting of typical measures such as currency devaluation, trade liberalization, social spending cuts, layoffs, removal of state subsidies on food and other goods, and a shift to privatization and to an export-oriented economy, particularly focused on the export of cotton. Austerity measures in Sudan were met with protests in the 1980s.

Ukraine

As of 2025, Ukraine is the second-most indebted country to the IMF, accounting for 9.8% of the IMF's credit outstanding, at SDR 10.86 billion.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych negotiated with the IMF before being overthrown in the 2014 Euromaidan coup. Because the IMF was demanding a decrease in wages and health and education spending, Yanukovych decided not to take the loan and began negotiating with Russia instead.

After the coup, the new government took a $26 billion loan from the IMF after cutting its gas subsidy for citizens by 50%. The IMF has offered Ukraine another loan after the beginning of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Venezuela

During the 1980s, Venezuela had to allocate 50% of its export earnings to pay for IMF debt. The implementation of an IMF reform package in February of 1989 sparked mass protests in which numerous civilians were killed by state forces. The policy package, which responded to the demands of the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, included an increase in gasoline prices and public transportation fares, the deregulation of prices for essential goods and services, the privatization of public enterprises, a wage freeze, reductions in the social budget, and an increase in external debt payments. The cost of public transport increased by 30% overnight, which, combined with the other reforms and rapid and dramatic price increases, sparked the mass resistance. This is often traced as one of the landmark events in the lead up to the end of the oligarchic Fourth Republic, the rise of the Bolivarian Revolution and the election of Hugo Chavez.

Yugoslavia

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yugoslavia tried to borrow from the West to expand its economy. When a recession began in the West, the West banned Yugoslavia from exporting goods in order to put the country in debt. The IMF and World Bank forced Yugoslavia to restructure its economy by cutting social spending, freezing wages, eliminating worker-controlled enterprises, and increasing unemployment. Economic growth dropped from 7% per year in the late 1960s to under 3% by the 1980s and was negative by 1990.

Zambia

The IMF forced Zambia's government to eliminate subsidies for pesticides and fertilizers, decreasing agricultural output and leaving seven million people short of food.

See also

• The World Bank
• World Trade Organization
• Neoliberalism
• Washington Consensus
• Liberalization
• Privatization
• Austerity
• Debt
• Imperialism
• Neocolonialism