"The IMF and World Bank hurt poor countries and undermine de

An example that confirms this can be found in Cambodia, a country that in 1999 spent $12.1 Dollars per capita on debt servicing yet, between 1990-1998 it spent only $17 Dollars per capita on health and on in five children died before the age of five during the same period.
             However, in this paper, I shall not be focussing on the crisis of the Middle Income Heavily Indebted Countries, who borrowed from commercial banks from the industrialised world, mainly the United States who offered the countries concerned loans with short maturity periods and variable rates of interest so that they could rapidly earn profits on their newly acquired "petrodollars" which, they obtained as a result of the OPEC oil price increases of 1973-74 and 1978-79.
             The reason why this crisis will not be the main focus of my attention despite the fact that it had devastating consequences and led the 1980's to become known in Latin America as "the lost decade" because of the severe deterioration of economic growth and quality of life that it suffered is that the crisis is no longer a significant international phenomenon given that almost 80 percent of the outstanding debt owed to commercial banks by the most heavily indebted less developed countries including Mexico, Argentina and Brazil has now been restructured. It has even been claimed by Commercial bankers and financiers in the industrialised countries that following a Brady-type restructuring accord with Argentina in April 1992and with Brazil in July 1992, the banking industry could close its books on less developed country debt (Todaro 2003, p1617).
             The second strain of debt problem has affected mainly the poorest nations of the world and has developed in a more gradual fashion than the crisis that hit the middle- income countries in the early 1980's. These countries obtained the majority of their loans from official donors such as multilateral and bilateral donors like the World Bank and IMF and developed country governments who provided loans on very favourable terms with long amortisation periods and fixed rates of interest.