POVERTY REDUCTION AND THE RHETORIC OF PARTICIPATION IMF/World Bank

The World Bank and IMF have proposed

the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

(PRSP) framework for all poor countries

as a condition of receiving unconditional

debt relief under the HIPC Initiative. The

PRSPs will also be the key vehicle for the

World Bank and IMF and other donors for

various assistance packages, including loans.

Like its predecessors, the PRSP framework

promotes the ideas of ‘participation’ and

‘ownership’. The ownership of such a grand

framework cannot possibly rest with the

poor countries or their people if the whole

idea is the product of World Bank and IMF

think-tanks. In discussing the development

of Bangladesh’s PRSP neither participation

nor ownership was the target in preparing

a national poverty-reduction strategy: they

were merely necessary components of a

document required for the continuation

of debt and lending relationships with the

World Bank and IMF.

Introduction

Recent thoughts on poverty and poverty

reduction seem ‘big’ in terms of ideas, units of analysis, global measurement of

poverty, and the scale of planned policy

intervention This ‘grand approach’ has taken

large communities and groups of people—

entire countries with populations of millions

- as the common units of analysis to assess

and understand poverty. A similar approach

has been adopted in the Poverty Reduction

Strategy Paper (PRSP) framework proposed

by the World Bank and the IMF in 1999.

Rather than an epic and philanthropic

discovery, the PRSP framework should be

understood as the latest approach in the

poverty-reduction strategies of international

financial institutions (IFIs) for their client

countries. It is associated with a previous series

of approaches, such as the Highly Indebted

Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, Country

Assistance Strategy (CAS), Participatory

Poverty Assessment (PPA), Poverty

Action Plan (PAP), and Comprehensive

Development Framework (CDF).

There is a constant attempt to characterise

PRSPs as a country-owned and government-

led process. Widespread agreement about

the PRSP framework can be found among

the IFI boards on key issues to ensure local,download