Senate President David Mark on Monday charged international financial institutions to ensure that their economic policies were tailored to accommodate the realities of each benefiting country. Mark made the call when the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde visited him in Abuja.
He urged the IMF to embark on serious reforms to reverse the negative perception whereby their policies were viewed as capitalist agenda for destruction of Africa’s developing economies. “Those very laudable economic policies that you design sometimes don’t fit into the local conditions of the countries where they are prescribed for. Let the IMF programmes always be such that can take into consideration our local conditions.
“The same prescription cannot go for every country because of the difference in the environment and their economic thresholds. So when you are prescribing, you should look at their individual countries and then get different prescriptions for them, ‘’Mark advised. The Senate President also called on the IMF boss to initiate policies to correct the inequality in the world trade which was currently skewed to undermine the developing economies. He observed that the current spate of protests in some advanced countries was the consequence of the imbalance in world trade.
“I think the advanced economies owe it a duty to the rest of us to make sure that the current trade imbalance which undermines one section of the world is not healthy for the world security. The situation where one part of the world is growing while the developing economies are suffering does not augur well for world peace, ‘’ he said. Lagarde said the Fund should beware of the prevailing economic upheavals in the advanced economies by taking adequate measures to cushion the effect.
“Nigeria had the capacity and the tools to define its economy, the IMF cannot determine what is good for the country. We act as a trusted adviser for many, without prescribing, unless we are requested by the country. The IMF chief was accompanied on the visit by Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy.
