The Shepherd that eats the sheep.

The shepherd that eats the sheep.

The struggles in the ‘UNIQUE’ Tanzania,   What seemed to have happen.

Writing: The best democracy money can buy by Greg Palast.

http://www.skeptically.org/wto/id2.html

How the IMF Cured AIDS

The IMF and its sidekick, the World Bank, have lent a sticky helping hand to scores of nations. Take Tanzania. Today, in that African state, 1.3 million people are getting ready to die of AIDS. The IMF and World Bank have come to the rescue with a brilliant neo-liberal solution: require Tanzania to charge for what were pre­viously free hospital appointments. Since the Bank imposed this requirement, the number of patients treated in Dar es Salaam’s three big public hospitals has dropped by 53 percent. The Bank’s cure is working!

The IMF World Bank helpers also ordered Tanzania to charge fees for school attendance, then expressed surprise that school en­rollment dropped from 80 percent to 66 percent.

Altogether the Bank and IMF had 157 helpful suggestions for Tanzania. In April 2000, the Tanzanian government secretly agreed to adopt them all. It was sign or starve. No developing na­tion can borrow hard currency from any commercial bank without IMF blessing (except China, whose output grows at 5 percent per year by studiously following the reverse of IMF policies).

The IMF and World Bank have effectively controlled Tanza­nia’s economy since 1985. Admittedly, when they took charge they found a socialist nation mired in poverty, disease and debt. The IMF’s love-the-market experts wasted no time in cutting trade barriers, limiting government subsidies and selling off state indus­tries. The World Bank’s shadow governors worked wonders. Ac­cording to World Bank watcher Nancy Alexander of Citizens’ Network on Essential Services (Maryland), in just fifteen years Tanzania’s GDP dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, literacy fell and the rate of abject poverty jumped to 51 percent of the popula­tion. Yet, the World Bank did not understand why it failed to win the hearts and minds of Tanzanians for its free market game plan. In June 2000, the Bank reported in frustration, “One legacy of so­cialism is that most people continue to believe the State has a fun­damental role in promoting development and providing social services.”Greg Palast