New study shows IMF still tying economic reforms to loans

A new study has found that despite the IMFs claims it has changed and no longer ties financial support to economic reforms, it still does. The International Monetary Fund's managing director Christine Lagarde has said the types of structural adjustments demanded of borrower countries is a thing of the past and "before her time". But the joint study from Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge and Waikato universities shows that conditions on loans such as the sale of state-owned-assets, restrictions on public spending and labour reforms are still prevalent. Thomas Stubbs, a lecturer in Qualitative Sociology at the University of Waikato and research associate at the University of Cambridge.