Leftist Groups Urge IMF To Use Proceeds Of Gold Sale For Debt Relief

The IMF has sold gold from time to time, and doesn't seem to be buying any more. When sales are announced the gold market gets jittery but the sales are usually absorbed with little more than hiccups when gold's in a bull market.

The latest round of IMF sales, of 400 tonnes as announced back in Septemebr of '09, is now complete. Now done, left-wing development groups want the institution to apply the gains to debt relief. The institution, in its earlier annoucements, all-but invited such requests.

Tim Jones, policy officer at the Jubilee Debt Campaign, urged the big western shareholders that dominate decision-making at the IMF to use the money for debt relief.

"The IMF is doing very well out of the economic crisis it helped to create, with a windfall from gold sales and profit from lending," Jones said. "Yet, many poor countries have been forced into debt through no fault of their own, whether due to disasters or the financial crisis caused by western banks. The IMF should use its excess money to cancel such debts."

He said a total of 58 civil society organisations and networks from across the world have written to the governments that control the IMF, calling on them to use the windfall to cancel poor countries' debts. Signatories include Oxfam International, the International Trade Union Confederation, Action Aid International, Cafod, Save the Children and the World Development Movement.

The precise figure asked for was $2.6 billion.


Interestingly, some spokespeople for those left-wing groups are treating the IMF as if it were acting like a profit-making corporation when it shouldn't.