For the debt-watchdog Freedom from Debt Coalition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is “dead, a walking dead.”

Ted Aldwin Ong, chairperson of FDC – Iloilo Chapter said “The sooner we bury this economic zombie, the better for the economies and the peoples of the world.”

The declaration was released by the group after IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, the first female chief of IMF, visited the country for the first time and met with President Aquino November 16.

Lagarde, whose visit is part of her regional visit in Southeast Asia, reportedly solicited insights on how to solve the Eurozone economic crisis and advised the Philippine government to rationalize tax incentives granted to business.

In a statement, FDC said it “join the peoples of the Eurozone who are currently on strike.”

“The IMF should not be permitted to spread socioeconomic diseases through its vile, anti-people and neoliberal policies here in the Philippines, or in the Eurozone, or in any other country,” FDC said.

The group alleged that the IMF failed to stabilize the global financial institution and to predict many crises of regional and global impact, like the US financial crisis.

“Its counterproductive prescriptions to such crises, and its policy conditionalities to its loans to many developing countries, like the Philippines, drove them deeper into debt and maldevelopment.  For all these reasons, the IMF should have long been consigned to oblivion and death,” FDC said.

The FDC said even the country suffers “the grave consequences of the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the IMF in the 1980s.”

SAPs are IMF’s polices before granting loans to developing countries like the Philippines, which provides conditionalities on how the money will be spent. Under the program, the borrower is being guided to be a more market-oriented economy.*