BANGKOK: Coconut farmer Sombat Chuekrod travelled more than 200 km to join hundreds on the streets of Bangkok on Friday (Oct 16) demanding that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank change how they deal with the developing world.
Finance ministers, central bank governors and other top policymakers gathered this week in the Thai capital for the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, as decision-makers tackle an inflation crisis fuelled by the US war on Iran and other economic shocks.
The message from the IMF has been clear: After years of economic crises starting with the pandemic and continuing through the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, worldwide debt is too high and governments need to cut spending.
For the hundreds at the protest in Bangkok, as well as for rights groups and analysts interviewed by AFP, that message is the wrong one.
“We want the IMF and World Bank to rethink their role,” said 51-year-old Sombat, as he walked alongside banners demanding reform of the institutions.
“Thai people are already poor. Please don’t make them any poorer.”
Protest organisers called on institutions like the IMF to focus on climate financing and tax reforms that aid poorer citizens rather than demand governments cut subsidies and social spending.
“Governments across the Global South are being forced to squeeze vital spending on public health, education, and social protection just to service illegitimate debts to wealthy nations and private creditors,” Lidy Nacpil, one of the protest organisers, said in a statement.
“INEQUALITY EMERGENCY”
Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the meetings, Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar said the world was facing an “inequality emergency”, and that the IMF’s calls for fiscal consolidation were code for cutting spending on essential social support during the war-fuelled inflation crisis.
“It will lead to (more) price rises. It might lead to hunger,” he said. “You will see cuts further happening in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of basic social security.
“So all that is going to suffer in a time when you actually need it more.”
