Despite the rhetoric of poverty reduction, the authors contend that little has changed in the substance, form and process of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank programmes. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach still implies stringent policy conditionalities, outlined in the mandatory policy matrices attached to PRSP documents. The direction of impact of these operational documents promoting open trade, investment and financial regimes, are severely criticized as well as the main pillars of the PRSP framework (national ownership, participation and public accountability). The authors arrive at the conclusion that it upholds the same neo-liberal market-oriented policies that were peddled to the developing world as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in the eighties and early nineties. The failure of SAPs, and the general failure of
IMF/WB intervention, begs for more political space and opportunity for new imaginations and alternatives to be articulated.
