World Bank Designs

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been deservedly hauled over the coals by its critics for misreading the east Asian crisis, for designing inappropriate programmes for South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand and, what is worse, for its gross failure in discharging its major function of surveillance, It is a pity that both D N Ghosh ('Currency Boards: Missionaries and Converts' , March 7,1998) and Ranjit Sau ('Capital Cannibalism, Currency Chaos and the IMF,' March 7, 1998) have missed the opportunity to put the Fund squarely in the dock the former by mistakenly presuming that the Fund supports currency boards in order to deprive national decision-makers of discretionary powers and the latter by needlessly marring his fine logical reasoning with ideology-laden strictures. The correspondent writing in your editorial columns ('Asian Currency Crisis: Indonesia and IMF, March 28, 1998) too joins them by insinuating that the Fund's assistance to these countries is motivated by its desire to bail out private creditors.