[PEN-L:7415] Alert: No gold sales for ESAF!

[Robert Naiman <naimanr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ALERT: GOLD SALES FOR DEBT CANCELLATION -
NOT FOR THE IMF'S "ESAF"!

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to ask Congress very soon for
authorization to sell part of the IMF?s stock of gold.  Treasury and the IMF
say that the proceeds would be used for debt relief, but in fact most of the
money would end up going to the IMF?s Enhanced Structural Adjustment
Facility (ESAF).

ESAF is the program which inflicts the harshest structural adjustment
measures on countries whose governments can?t get credit or capital from any
other source.  Those measures, which require governments to emphasize export
production over food security, lay off public sector employees, slash public
spending (such as health and education), raise taxes, raise interest rates,
open up economies to foreign corporations, end subsidies, and end support of
local manufacturers have devastated economies around the world and left
countries deeper in debt and more impoverished.

According to the IMF?s own staff review, annual real per capita GDP growth
averaged 0.0% for countries with ESAF programs over the period 1991-1995,
whereas non-ESAF developing countries experienced, on average, 1.0% annual
real per capita GDP growth. African countries with ESAF programs fared even
worse, with an average annual .3% decline in real per capita incomes over
the period of IMF structural adjustment from 1991-1995. At the same time the
external debt burden of ESAF countries has grown larger as a share of their
economies.

The IMF claims that ESAF is an integral component of its approach to debt
relief, because it is the IMF program designed particularly for
severely-indebted low-income countries.  The IMF refuses to participate in
the World Bank-designed debt relief program (the Heavily Indebted Poor
Countries [HIPC] Initiative, which is itself seriously flawed) until it gets
all the funds it wants for ESAF.  If it manages to get enough ESAF funding
over the next year, it will be able to rely on repayments on loans to fund
the facility indefinitely.  That would mean that the IMF would be able to
continue imposing structural adjustment perpetually, with no oversight from
Congress or anyone else.

Many G-7 countries, bending to the pressure exerted by the international
Jubilee 2000 movement, have put forward debt relief plans that would be
financed largely by selling IMF gold.  Their good intentions, however, will
be cancelled out by the damage wrought by structural adjustment if the money
goes to ESAF.

Please write your members of Congress today to insist that IMF gold be sold
to provide immediate debt cancellation for impoverished countries -- with no
structural adjustment conditions attached.  Demand that no further funding
go to ESAF.

Write Representatives at:  U.S. House of Representatives / Washington, DC
20515
Write Senators at: U.S. Senate / Washington, DC  20510
Call legislators through the Capitol switchboard:  202/224-3121
For more information, call 50 Years Is Enough: 202/IMF-BANK


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Robert Naiman <naimanr@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Preamble Center
1737 21st NW
Washington, DC 20009
phone: 202-265-3263
fax:   202-265-3647
http://www.preamble.org/
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