By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 31 -- The IMF, which called the outlook for Libya's economy “favorable” as recently as February 15 of this year, is still having “technical meetings” with the government of Yemen even as protesters are gunned down, IMF spokesperson Caroline Atkinson told Inner City Press on Thursday.
Inner City Press submitted two questions to the IMF bi-weekly briefing on March 31, including
“On Yemen, please describe IMF's engagement with current gov't after Ghazi Shbeikat's talks earlier this month, and any impact its killing of protesters has had.”
Ms. Atkinson translated this to “I have a question online about Yemen: Please describe the IMF’s engagement with the current government after talks earlier this month and any impact the violence has had.”
The violence -- that is, the killing of protesters -- has been so bad even Yemen's Permanent Representative to the UN Abduallah Alsaidi, former head of the Group of 77 and China, has quit. Here was Ms. Atkinson's (first) answer:
“Of course, in Yemen, Syria, and other cases we deplore any violence and we hope for peaceful resolution of political issues–We have a program actually outstanding with Yemen and there have been contacts at a technical level with the central bank monitoring developments. We have had contacts at a technical level with a number of central banks in the region.”
Reporters who cover the IMF but are not present in its briefing room are not allowed follow up questions.
But in this case, those in the room followed up:
QUESTION: I’d like to follow up on Yemen. Is that program still in place or has it been suspended in any way?
MS. ATKINSON: Well, we do not suspend programs –-
QUESTION: Well, no, sometimes you do when it comes to political issues -– Ukraine, for example.
MS. ATKINSON: Well, perhaps it is just semantics. Our programs remain in place until they expire. Quite often in different occasions countries may not draw under the programs for different reasons including that we may not have reached agreement on economic policies or on policies that we believe will be sufficient to justify the financing. In the case of Yemen the Board approved a three year arrangement last July under the extended credit facility. There has not been any disbursement since then to Yemen.
There are a number of objectives of the program: supporting strong growth; diversifying the revenue base because there is an important need for expenditures especially for the poor and the vulnerable; and reprioritizing the expenditures to support capital investment as well as social spending. We have been in discussions about that for a number of months.
We'll see. Inner City Press had submitted a second question, as it did without any answer from the IMF two weeks ago:
“Please state whether Dominique Strauss Kahn has any relatives working in the World Bank or other UN affiliated organizations, and if so why this does not run afoul of anti nepotism rules and principles?”
Two weeks ago, the IMF simply pretended this question had not been submitted. This time, while Ms. Atkinson did not read it out, her deputy William Murray later sent this answer:
“Matthew, He has no relatives on the staff of the IMF. Given the premise of your question, let me note that the Bank and UN are wholly separate institutions from the IMF, with no fiscal or managerial connections. At the IMF we certainly have nepotism rules, and they have not been violated in any way.”
While Inner City Press thanked Murray for the answer, follow up questions are predicted. Watch this site.
