What have the IMF and World Bank done to make structural adjustment more palatable?
In 1999, the IMF and World Bank, aware of the tremendously negative reputation of structural adjustment programs, attempted to rename them, without altering the basic substance of the policy package. The name they chose, in fine Orwellian fashion, was “poverty reduction.” People around the world continue to call the policies “structural adjustment programs,” or SAPs for short. By adopting an ostensibly participatory process in which civil societies and governments would work with the institutions to compose their own development programs, known as “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.” Although this process has been exposed as deeply flawed, at best – a purposeful fraud with the intent of co-opting civil society organizations at worst – the institutions continue to insist that countries getting loans from the World Bank’s IDA division or the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (the new name of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility) complete a PRSP.
