IMF, World Bank Partly To Blame For High Inflation In PH, Groups Say

June 5, Manila – The high levels of inflation burdening Filipinos are linked to active policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank from previous decades, according to social movements in a discussion against the IMF and World Bank.

“Part of the high prices of diesel, gasoline, and LPG are due to oil excise taxes under TRAIN, a law that the World Bank required for a $450 million loan in 2019. And we cannot regulate these oil prices because of the oil deregulation law, a policy pushed by the IMF during the Ramos administration. We also pay for higher water rates since the World Bank-supported privatization in the late 1990s,” Cham Perez of the Center for Women’s Resources explained.

“The first Philippine president to fully worship at the altar of the United States (US)-dominated IMF-World Bank was the dictator Marcos Sr., sinking the country in debt and starting the decades of privatization, de-regulation, and liberalization. The son is really not different from the father. Marcos Jr. is keeping the same externally imposed policies and even his father’s decree on automatic budget allocations to pay foreign debts, draining our budgets,” Perez added.

The discussion, titled Debt and Dictates: On the IMF-WBG’s Attacks Against Sovereignty, convened representatives of social movements in Manila and civil society organizations from other parts of the world.

To solve the inflation problem, a decisive re-assessment of these policies has to be done, according to Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo of IBON International in a separate statement: “A series of dictates came with the IMF-World Bank loans with strings attached. A sure-fire way to stem the burden of inflation in the country is to review and repeal the old, outdated, and harmful policies that are exacerbating it. Marcos Jr.’s inter-agency body committee to supposedly address inflation will be mere bureaucratic fluff and misdirection if it does not strike at the entrenched rules.”

With a week before the country’s commemoration of Independence Day, the organizers added that the entrenched dictates of the IMF-World Bank show the unfinished struggle for genuine independence.

“These policies imposed by the IMF-World Bank – which are mainly controlled by developed countries, in particular the US, historically and currently – really contribute to deplorable conditions of poverty and immiseration in countries, especially in the global South,” Carol Araullo of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said.

“In a time of greed-flation and prevailing IMF-World Bank impositions, the richest business families get richer, while workers have to take multiple jobs but still can’t feed their families with their wages. What is this except a situation of being economically chained? Disentangling from IMF-World Bank policy impositions, and repudiating the loans that imposed them, will be a steps towards true economic sovereignty,” Noel Colina of People Over Profit said.

Debt and Dictates was organized by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, People Over Profit, BAYAN, All UP Academic Employees Union, People Coalition for Food Sovereignty, International Indigenous People’s Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation, IBON International, Asia Pacific Research Network, Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific, the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development, and the Reality of Aid Network. The discussion served as the kick-off event to the Reclaim Our Future campaign, a series of discussions, actions, and workshops from June to October, to hold the IMF-World Bank accountable at its Annual Meetings in Marrakech, Morocco in October 2023.

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