The World Bank havs been the most important agency providing adjustment loans. However,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also moved into structural adjustment lending with the establishment of the Structural Adjustment Facility in 1986 to provide additional support for low-income countries. Most bilateral aid agencies like the United States Agency for International Development also moved significant proposions pf their portfolios to policy-based assistance.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, frequently called the "World Bank" was established in July 1944 at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA. The World Bank opened for business on June 25, 1946. The World Bank’s goal is to reduce poverty and improve living standards by promoting sustainable growth and investments in people. The Bank provides loans, technical assistance and policy guidance to help its developing-country members achieve this objective. The World Bank group of institutions includes:

• The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
• The International Development Association (IDA)
• The International Finance Corporation (IFC)
• The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)
• The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)

The World Bamk has become the promary financier of development projects in them Third World. It has also become the Third World's largest creditor. Together the countries of the Third World owe the World Bank more than US 160 billion.

The World Bank is currently the largest multi-national lending and techinical agency dealing with Third World development. As the world's lending development agency, the World bank has a wide-ranging mandate, from consolidating loans for large scale development projects to providing structural adjustment loans and sectoral adjustment loans to developing countries experiencing balance of payments problems.

In the 1980s, in the large part owing to the debt crisis, the Bank increasingly served as a debt-management institution through structural adjustment programs (SCN community Links).

World Bank Home Page

Established at a conference held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, from July 1-22, 1944, the IMF came into official existence on December 27, 1945 when 29 countries signed its Articles of Agreement (its Charter). The IMF commenced financial operations on March 1, 1947. Currently, there are 181 member countries.

The IMF's main ofjectives are:

• to promote international monetary cooperation;
• to facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of international trade;
• to promote exchange stability;
• to assist in the establishment of a multilateral system of payments;
• to make its general resources temporarily available to its members experiencing balance of payments difficulties under adequate safeguards;
• to shorten the duration and lessen the degree of disequilibrium in the international balances of payments of members.

The IMF achieves these objectives by advising member countries on their economic policies and by providing conditional assistance to member countries experiencing balance of payment problems.

The IMF played a significant role during the 1980s in "bailing out the commercial banks." By providing IMF credits to developing countries, essentially to sevrve commercial debt, the IMF took upon itself the role of "gatekeeper" for creditors, forcing highly indebted countries to adopt SAPs as a condition not only for receiving IMF credits, but as the "stamp of approval" debtor countries needed as a condition for receiving futher grants and aid from all donor sources (SCN Community Links).

IMF Home Page