Structural adjustment policies SAP

'''Structural adjustment policies SAP '''

discussion        “The 1980s saw the stalling of global summitry and goal-setting, and a dramatic change in the global intellectual environment. The UN’s influence waned, while that of the IMF and World Bank increased as they imposed structural adjustment policies on the increasing numbers of poor countries coming to them for loans. The Bank and Fund imposed a recipe of liberalisation, privatisation and reduced government to ‘get the prices right’, leading to what many have seen as development’s ‘lost decade’. Towards the end of the 1980s, more and more evidence began to emerge that structural adjustment and the associated conditionalities were not delivering on the promise of growth and prosperity and that the fiscal restraint they called for were damaging education, health and other essential services (Cornia et al, 1987; Mosley et al, 1995). This was particularly true in Africa and Latin America. Political space began to open up for those with alternatives to structural adjustment, and in the 1990s UN summitry returned.” (David Hulme 2009: 8)''' '''

“During the 1980s and 1990s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund promoted in poorer nations a key set of reforms known as structural adjustment. In contrast to these institutions’ stance during their first three decades of existence, these programs sought to reduce the state role in the economy and called for reductions in state expenditures on social services such as education and health care, introduction of user fees for such services, trade liberalization, currency devaluation, selling off of state-owned enterprises, and financial and labor marked deregulation.” (Edelman and Haugerud 2003:XX)