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Role of Imf in Nigeria

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The responsibilities and functions of the IMF centre on its key purpose: to deal with 'international monetary problems' by acting as the forum for its members to 'consult' and 'collaborate' with it so as to 'facilitate' and 'promote' 'international monetary co-operation', 'growth of international trade' and 'exchange rate stability' to achieve financial and economic stability. The IMF seeks to achieve these broad purposes through its core functions: surveillance, financial assistance and technical assistance to ensure its members continuously adhere to its underlying purposes. The traditional objective of surveillance is ensuring orderly exchange arrangements' among members. The IMF, in 'consultation' with its members by both bilateral and multilateral means, assesses individual members' economic and monetary policies against its purposes to ascertain whether they pose a risk to the stability of the international monetary system. It seeks to provide financial assistance to members experiencing balance of payment problems, on the basis that the individual member complies with the conditions set for such assistance so the IMF can be assured the money will be repaid. This invariably requires the member country to adjust its economic and monetary policies, giving rise to a considerable level of coercive and unfettered leverage by the IMF to ensure changes are indeed made. The final function of the IMF is to provide technical assistance to its members, but without the same degree of compulsion as is attached to the other activities. Conditionality which generally refers to the designated policy and procedures attached to the assistance the IMF provides ensures to a certain extent the objectives of the assistance is achieved. It has, in many respects, generated a considerable level of controversy in light of the expansion of its policy remit to include matters at a micro level such as infrastructural reform. As Lastra notes the rationale for this expansion was the fact that the crisis stricken countries discussed above exposed considerable problems in this area thus exacerbating the financial problems they experienced

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