The International Monetary Fund and developing countries: a review of the evidence and policy options

As its systemic role evaporated with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, so the International Monetary Fund (IMF) became drawn into a much more specific role in the context of the balance-of-payments (BOP) problems that developing countries were encountering. At its inception, the IMF had been seen as having no specific role in developing countries, but now it became exclusively these countries that formed its clientele. While during the 1970s the IMF had continued to make a few relatively large loans to a limited number of industrial countries (Italy and the United Kingdom), beyond the mid-1970s industrial countries ceased to draw any resources from it.