Debt relief and structural adjustment in Tanzania

Any analysis of the erratic unfolding of global economic crisis is bound to be hotly contested. This is particularly so in mid-1999, amid claims from Washington that the past two years' dangers of financial meltdown and deflation were averted and finally extinguished through a combination of policy measures and good fortune: slightly looser Federal Reserve monetary policy adopted in September 1998, in the immediate wake of the successful public-private bailout of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund; a new $90 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) insurance scheme announced the following month; the convening of key countries in a Forum on Financial Stability; the lack of financial contagion (contrary to expectations) in the wake of Brazil's January 1999 currency meltdown; the long-awaited revival (however infirm) of the Japanese economy; new plans for somewhat more transparent budgetary and exchange rate systems in emerging markets; and a decision at the G-8 Cologne meeting in June 1999 to sell 10% of the IMF's gold to fund partial debt relief for the poorest Third World countries. Indeed many observers were surprised at IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus's success at turning the debt relief strategy into a vehicle for tougher "Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility" conditions, just months after the IMF was criticised to the point of ridicule for its East Asian, Russian and Brazilian mishaps (effectively, granting $200 billion in bad loans over 15 months, in exchange for the application of inappropriate austerity measures).

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Debt Relief and Structural Adjustment in Tanzania

Routledge Studies in Development Economics - Post-Apartheid Southern Africa ◽

10.4324/9780203411544.ch15 ◽

1998 ◽

Author(s):

Anders Danielson

Keyword(s):

Structural Adjustment ◽

Debt Relief

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A Well-Adjusted Debt: How the International Anti-Debt Movement Failed to Delink Debt Relief and Structural Adjustment

International Review of Social History ◽

10.1017/s0020859021000146 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Hélène Baillot

Keyword(s):

Structural Adjustment ◽

Division Of Labour ◽

Debt Relief ◽

Adjustment Programme ◽

Structural Adjustment Programme ◽

Alternative Framework ◽

Global North

Abstract This article analyses the process by which the issues of debt and structural adjustment were redefined by a plurality of actors, from institutional experts to activists, during the 1980s and 1990s. Although it mainly focuses on the 1990s, when the Jubilee 2000 campaign emerged, blossomed, and died, it takes into account the institutional mobilization preceding it. It then points to the need to think about the dynamics of competition and the division of labour among international players. While the leading Jubilee 2000 coalition in the Global North opposed debt on economic and religious grounds, African anti-structural adjustment programme (SAP) activists who joined the Jubilee Afrika campaign promoted an alternative framework: according to them, debt was not just economically “unsustainable”; it was first and foremost “illegitimate”, as were any conditions attached to its reduction, beginning with the implementation of SAPs. The story of the anti-debt campaign is the story of their failure.

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