The IMF itself responded to the criticisms it received for its programme focus in several reports, notably in “The IMF’s Response to the Asian Crisis” (January 17, 1999) which gave a preliminary assessment of its programmes for Indonesia, Korea and Thailand, for the most part defending its actions although it admitted that lessons had been learned during the crisis. In the case of the Asian crisis, the IMF saw its role primarily remaining in the defence and safety of the global financial system, and secondly helping to restore confidence to the economies affected by the crisis. Its goal was thus to provide financial programmes which might provide the foundation for economic stabilisation - and this is indeed exactly what it did. The pillars of this platform were consequently:
1. Temporary monetary tightening to stop exchange rate depreciation
2. Concerted action to correct the weaknesses in the financial system, which contributed significantly to the crisis
3. Structural reforms to remove features of the economy that had become impediments to growth (such as monopolies, trade barriers, and nontransparent corporate practices) and to improve the efficiency of financial inter-mediation and the future soundness of financial systems
4. Efforts to assist in reopening or maintaining lines of external financing
3. The maintenance of a sound fiscal policy, including through providing for rising budgetary costs of financial sector restructuring, while protecting social spending. Once the severity of the economic downturn in the affected countries became clear, fiscal policy was oriented toward supporting economic activity and expanding the social sector safety net.’
It was consequently NOT the IMF’s specific job to attempt or help with the stabilisation of the financial markets through the implementation of short-term measures, which could well prove contrary to the medium-term economic stabilisation requirements. That said, a key lesson of the crisis which the IMP did take on board was the need to co-ordinate with the private sector, particularly with regard to private debt rollovers and restructuring, providing key support in particular to the roll-over of Korean short-term debt, negotiations which took place between December 1997 - March 1998.
Many of these points are well made. It most certainly was not the job of the IMP to bail out the Thai, Korean and Indonesian corporate sectors after these had found themselves both over-leveraged and under-hedged. Equally, the IMF cannot be blamed for inadequate regulatory supervision in several Asian countries affected by the crisis, for those countries are lack of sufficient institutional infrastructure for the lack of corporate, market and data transparency. It also cannot be held accountable for the lack of checks and balances which existed in several Asian countries, resulting in significant levels of corruption and vested interests in the case of some. Indeed, the IMF programmes sought to address many of these important issues. Throughout the Asian crisis, IMP policies and programmes attracted substantial criticism from a host of different quarters, some in the U.S. taking the view that it should not provide any bailouts, others in Asia saying that the bailouts were too little too late, yet others who said its key focus on fiscal austerity was misplaced since Asia’s public finances were already in surplus, and finally those who argued that the IMF should have stopped the crisis from happening in the first place. Some of these criticisms were reasonable, some ridiculous, and some betraying the most profound ignorance of the situation. The point about fiscal austerity is notable, and a criticism with some validity given that Asian countries were by no means fiscally lax, that the deficits were at the corporate rather than the public level, yet this was a key aspect of the policy programme aimed at closing Asian external gaps (trade and current account deficits). Granted, this was a brutal way to do it given that it implied that the domestic economy had to pay the price, bad to take the adjustment required to achieve this. But then so be it. The IMF did not create the debts problems. The IMF did not create the current account deficits, indeed in the case of Thailand it issued several warnings on that score. Indeed, the IMF is not a global financial supervisor as some take it. In the event of a financial crisis, it arrives after the fact and whatever its power and influence it cannot order the implementation of its programmes if a programme member is not fearful of getting the loan disbursement ceased.
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