IMF Paper on Argentina Spotlights Issues for Evaluation of Fund Policy
June 30, 2003
by Independent Evaluation Office, International Monetary Fund
A number of observers have raised questions about the effectiveness and quality of financing and policy advice provided by the International Monetary Fund in the decade preceding Argntina's 2001 economic crisis. A draft issues paper prepared by an independent policy-evaluation group at the Fund has begun a process of determining key trends in the evolution of the crisis, and detailing how the Fund will analyze these issues and build insights from this analysis into future policy.
Some critics have argued that the IMF's main fault lay in providing too much financing without requiring sufficient policy adjustment, while others have alleged that the policies recommended by the IMF actually contributed to the crisis. In either case, the eventual collapse of the convertibility regime and the associated adverse economic and social consequences for the country have, rightly or wrongly, had a reputational cost for the IMF.
This evaluation will focus on the period from 1991 to 2002, covering the time from the adoption of the convertibility regime to the immediate aftermath of its collapse. The evaluation will review the evolution of the IMF's advice and internal views on key areas of Argentina's economic policy, uncover how the IMF came to certain decisions at critical junctures in its relationship with the country, and assess how reasonable the decisions were in light of information available at the time. The evaluation will also consider-with the benefit of hindsight-if better outcomes could have been achieved with a different set of decisions by the IMF. The primary focus of the evaluation lies in drawing lessons for the IMF.
The Fund has prepared this paper to invite inputs and comments from various stakeholders by outlining the proposed design of the evaluation and by presenting the set of issues the IEO provisionally intends to explore in the evaluation.
Link: http://www.imf.org/External/NP/ieo/2003/arg/index.htm#3 [ HTML]
Keywords: International Monetary Fund, Argentina, policy, evaluation