WASHINGTON: How far could Cuba's opening go?
After its rapprochement with the United States, the steadfastly communist country could further dismantle nearly six decades of isolation by shaking hands with another old enemy, the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF, the world's crisis lender but also an economic policy disciplinarian, does not have an especially good reputation in Havana.
Cuba, like a number of its allies -- Venezuela and Bolivia, for instance -- regards the Fund as too married to a liberal capitalist ideology.
Cuba's now-retired strongman of 50 years, Fidel Castro, has never passed up an opportunity to label it an "evil" dispenser of "lethal advice". He went so far as to call for the Fund's "demolition" pure and simple in the early 2000s.
The Caribbean island was a founding member of the Fund in 1944 when it was established along with the World Bank.
But in 1964, five years after Castro's revolutionary forces seized power, Cuba became the first country to turn its back on the IMF, as well as the World Bank.
That makes Cuba one of the few countries -- North Korea and Liechtenstein are others -- cut off from the two Bretton Woods institutions that form the core of the world's powerful development finance system.
Comments
Comments are closed.