146/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
small producers, as well as workers and vendors In the Informal
sector, Is part of World Bank policies aimed at increasing taxes.
One scholar who supports IMF fiscal policies presents them in the
following way:
The IMF encourages developing countries to undertake tax
reforms in order to improve the allocation of economic resources.
It therefore calls for the elimination of highly progressive income-
tax schedules, since they create costly distortions in the way
resources are allocated, open the door to tax fraud and boost
administrative spending on debt-collection. IMF-recommended
tax reforms also include an overhaul of taxes on foreign trade.
(Lenain, 1993)Patrick Lenain was at one point an IMF official. His remarks need no
comment.
- Land Privatisation
This policy involves issuing land titles while raising the ceiling below
which access to property is denied. Such measures concentrate land
in the hands of the wealthy few, while small farmers give up their
land or mortgage it - only to become tenant farmers (sharecroppers)
and seasonal agricultural labourers, or to ] oin the ranks of the urban
poor. The policy violates traditional land rights (in Africa and India,
for example) and undermines the gains of authentic revolutionary
transformations. In Mexico, for example, Article 2 7 of the
Constitution - which enshrined the rights of indigenous peoples and
poor farmers over collective lands known as ejidos (see Chapter 15)-
was reformed earlier in the 1990s. This kind of land counter-reform
has been the object of huge mobilisations of poor farmers in Egypt
since 1997.
Land privatisation is also a way to repay the debt. The public land
sell-off generates state revenues, which are channelled off to inter
national creditors. Additional dirty money is also repatriated and
laundered in the process, no questions asked.
- Labour Market Reforms
The IMF and the World Bank recommend a loosening of labour
market regulations. They argue that institutional rigidities limit