A man reads a newspaper on an empty street in the Khan el-Khalil district of Cairo on February 17, a week after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.
June 07, 2011
By Robert Tait – Radio Free Europe
Egyptians by and large are not known for singing the praises of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As in much of the developing world, the Washington-based financial institution was widely reviled in Egypt as the architect of the neo-liberal economic policies that made it one of the most unequal societies in the world under former President Hosni Mubarak.
Now, four months after Mubarak was driven from office by a tidal wave of revolt driven by economic discontent, the IMF has emerged in a different and unlikely light.
On June 5, the organization implicitly acknowledged it had been out of step with public opinion by announcing a $3 billion deal aimed at reviving a battered economy reeling from the recent social and political upheavals.
The pledge -- following similar promises of financial aid from the United States and Saudi Arabia -- was all the more remarkable in the context of the redistributive and expansionary polices being pursued by Egypt's interim government. The country's finance ministry last week unveiled a draft budget it said would help the poor but which has worried economists by threatening to send the national deficit spiraling.
But announcing the new package in Cairo, the IMF's deputy director for Middle East and Central Asia, Ratna Sahay, insisted the fund had no quibble with the government's policies.
"The revolution brought forth many expectations and hopes and demands that have been simmering with the people for a long period of time," Sahay said. "And as we can see in Egypt, one of the biggest priorities of the government is indeed social justice. And if that is the priority of the government, and if that is the priority of the Egyptian people, then we respect that priority."
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