POLICY DEBATE
STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Radical transformation may push SA into IMF’s arms
The IMF may understand our problems better than our own elites
IMF bail-outs are usually bad news for the poor. Here, our economic policy debate seems to signal that the millions excluded from the economy might be better off with the IMF in charge. Last week’s medium-term budget policy statement showed that public finances are in a state that may at some point force the government to ask the IMF to rescue it. This raises an obvious irony: firing finance ministers, purportedly in the name of "radical economic transformation" could place control of economic policy in the hands of very nonradical IMF technicians who would impose tough restraints on the government.Normally, a bail-out would also force most of the country to pay for the failings of the elite as control of the budget passes to technicians who are not responsible to, and therefore do not care about, local people and their needs. But the IMF may understand our problems better than our own elites. Reaction to the medium-term budget policy statement has failed, across the spectrum, even ...
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