Analysis of the relationship between International Monetary Fund programs and economic performance in developing countries.
详细信息
文摘
Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) as defined in this study are economic programs for developing countries supported by the Bretton Woods institutions since the beginning of 1980s by the provision of finance advances provisional on the adoption of such programs. Developing countries have been confronted with prolonged balance of payments deficits for decades leading to poor economic performance. Because of this challenge and the difficulty in accessing international financial assistance due to lack of creditworthiness, these countries have turn to International Monetary Fund for credit needs. This study sought to find out if there was an association between structural adjustment programs and economic performance in developing countries through the use of correlational design. Overall, the findings in this study showed a significant relationship between IMF structural adjustment programs and economic performance in developing countries. All the three dependent variables examined notably, balance of payments, debts, and unemployment indicated a strong relationship with structural adjustment programs. The findings on the relationship between structural adjustment programs and balance of payments showed a significant negative relationship. Also the findings showed that the debt levels in most of the 34 countries showed a strong positive correlation with structural adjustment programs throughout the period of study. These results therefore show that IMF programs have not been effective in addressing economic performance problems in developing countries. It is therefore suggested that IMF should take a more supple approach and adapt its conditionality to economic structures of the borrowing countries.