I am not sure if it is just me, but it is dawning on me that the IMF has one standardized economic solution when it comes to tackling Africa’s economic crisis: Cut spending, cut spending, and cut spending!
Under the guise of the so-called “fiscal road map” presented in October to the International Monetary Fund (otherwise known as IMF), the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), thousands of public servants in Swaziland are due to lose their jobs in that country’s bid to gain approval for a loan from the IMF. Apparently, according to Swaziland’s finance minister Majozi Sithole, “these cutbacks will not affect health and education,” reports Africa News.
I am not an economist, but I would think that a person’s being unemployed also means cutbacks in the affected individual’s ability to afford education and health for his/her family who largely depends on his salary. Is retrenching 7,000 civil servants really the only way for the tiny Southern African monarchy to find its way out of this economic crisis? How about being a little bit entrepreneurial here? After all, policy is the art of the possible as I learned in my Policy 101 class.
Too many questions with no answers, but I won’t be surprised if huge sum of this loan would end up supporting the country’s autocratic royals instead of ordinary citizens.