africa: Indispensable or unworkable? The IMF's new approach to conditionality

In September 2002 the IMF's Executive Board finally approved a new set of guidelines on conditionality. These set out how its structural conditionality can be made more effective, with provisions on improving the clarity and focus of conditions, increasing recipient-country 'ownership' of reforms, and coordinating IMF conditionality with that of other organisations. But while any review of IMF conditionality is welcome, the new guidelines fail to address the deeper problems and flawed assumptions plaguing conditionality, says Bank and Fund watchdog the Bretton Woods Project.