Περίληψη:
This master thesis analyses the International Monetary Fund’s involvement in the post-communist Balkan countries and attempts an assessment of its role in the transition process from the centrally planned, socialist economy to the free, westernized, market economy. The aim is to parallel today’s experience of the Greek crisis under the IMF Stand-by Arrangement with the transition economies of the 1990s and 2000s, under various IMF programs, and derive some lessons for the Greek economy, concerning its current relation with the Fund.
Since 2007, the developments of the global financial recession have thrust the Fund into a new position of authority and prominence1. Even more, today, in the context of the sovereign debt tensions in Europe, IMF holds an important multilateral role. It acts as partner of the European Union and the European Central Bank both in lending the indebted countries and in cooperating for the stabilization and reform process, aiming to contain a potential spillover in the whole eurozone. Its contribution is decisive for the future of the currency and for the whole European Union, since the indebted countries, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, (the “PIGS” as they are called), have evoked more than a financial crisis, a crisis of identity of the EU structure. Addressing the current Greek crisis is a top priority for IMF because it represents an EU crisis with global repercussions. If Greece defaults on its sovereign debt, the destabilizing effects will be globally felt, since it will have to leave the single currency zone and most probably others will follow too.
IMF’s presence in Greece has been much debated, especially on a local basis. Its policies, the reforms required for the lending, the macroeconomic targets and the strict timeline for meeting them have set the whole cooperation program at the center of the storm for the Greek citizens and the political elite. The success or failure of this cooperation isn’t something which can be easily predicted because it is currently developing through cumbersome and fluent conditions, so we couldn’t attempt making such estimations in our analysis. We search to draw some broad line lessons, from the Fund’s previous experience in the Balkan region. The purpose of this paper will be achieved by following the subsequent analytical structure. At the beginning, we will get familiar with the IMF, the scope of its establishment, its multiple functions, the tools and mechanisms it uses in order to achieve its goals, along with a brief historic retrospect of the specific conditions that rendered its founding a necessity. We will continue this analysis by turning to the Balkan region in the early 90s, describing the particular conditions in the new democracies, aspiring to sever their economies from the soviet type closed system and launch the new era of an open capitalist scheme, according to the western developed economies. The IMF stood a linchpin and a patron for these countries, supporting them financially, designing their economic policy and supervising their development. After accounting the initial problems that arouse from this particular transformation process, the policies implemented under the authority of the Fund are also examined. In this project contributes the demonstration of two cases from the Balkans, the Albanian and the Bulgarian transition process. We identify the similarities between the policies of the arrangements and stress their crucial differences in terms of handling the funding and compliance to the attached conditional policies. An overall assessment of the relations of the Fund with the Balkan transition countries with special reference to the two case studies, advance the analysis and brings us closer to our aim of deriving some lessons from the Balkan experience of IMF for the Greek economy.
Κύρια θεματική κατηγορία:
Κοινωνικές, Πολιτικές και Οικονομικές επιστήμες
Λέξεις-κλειδιά:
IMF, Balkans, Albania, Bulgaria, transition economy
