In the Philippines, the IMF made them sell public companies and cut spending to pay debts, which hurt poor communities and handed key industries to foreign businesses. 

Both countries lost power to choose their own priorities, and lead to more poverty and reliance on outside help. This shows how IMF rules can push countries to favor global interests over their people’s needs, and how IMF loans can weaken a country’s control over its own decisions. 

I searched the internet and found this: the Philippines has privatized key industries such as electricity. The government sold part of the National Power Corporation to foreign companies, such as China's State Grid and Spain's Aboitiz Group, giving them control of power plants and distribution.

（Eva, Luna, Fei）

In Jamaica, IMF programs required deep austerity, wage freezes, and legislation aligned with IMF debt targets, even overruling court decisions. Similarly, in the Philippines, IMF-led structural reforms during the debt crises dictated fiscal policy, exchange rates, and privatization, constraining the government’s ability to shape its development path.

IN both cases, domestic econ policies are affected by external power, reducing the role of government and autonomy in the long term.

-Adam

• The government had to slash its education and health budgets. From 1985 to 1992, public health spending fell from 3.4% to 2.8% of GDP, even as malnutrition and infant mortality rates rose.

• Key national assets like Petron (national oil company) were privatized, weakening state control over strategic industries.

• Facing high unemployment and budget austerity, the government promoted labor export as a source of foreign exchange. By the 1990s, Overseas Filipino Workers became a pillar of the economy. In 2022, remittances accounted for ~9% of GDP.

  
  

  
  

Jamaica:

• The Jamaican government had to slash public spending, including on hospitals and schools.

• Devaluation and liberalization flooded the country with cheap foreign goods, destroying local agriculture and small businesses.

• For example, the dairy industry collapsed, and Jamaica began importing powdered milk instead of producing it domestically.

• Export Processing Zones (EPZs) were created to attract foreign investors, but:

  • Jobs were low-wage, insecure, and often foreign-owned.

  • Local industries couldn’t compete—the country lost the ability to shape its own industrial base.

(Christina, Olivia)

On the case of Philippine, IMF required the government to lower the financial outcome via SAP(structural adjustment plan), at the same time paying the loan regularly. So that the money will be paid back to IMF and developed country instead of devoting to the infrastructure. During the Covid time, this policy will support creditor countries instead of local people, when the deficit of government remained high.

-Keane

- Austerity: Wage freezes, public sector cuts, reduced social spending.

- Privatization: Forced sell-off of utilities, ports, and other state assets.

- Result: High debt persists, policy autonomy lost, and emigration surges.

Philippines

- Trade Liberalization: Local industries (e.g., farming) collapsed due to cheap imports.

- Privatization: Essential services (water, power) sold off, raising costs.

- Result: Chronic debt, weakened labor rights, and food insecurity.

Jamaica: Austerity and Economic Dependency

Austerity Measures:

Since the 1970s, Jamaica has entered over 20 IMF agreements, often requiring severe austerity. For example, the 2013 agreement mandated public sector wage freezes, tax hikes, and cuts to healthcare and education. These measures shifted resources away from social programs, limiting the government’s ability to address poverty and inequality.

Sovereignty Impact: The state lost autonomy to allocate budgets according to local needs, prioritizing IMF-mandated fiscal targets over public welfare.

Currency Devaluation:

IMF conditions in the 1970s–80s required Jamaica to devalue its currency to boost exports. This led to inflation, eroding purchasing power and exacerbating poverty.

Sovereignty Impact: Monetary policy was dictated by external actors, weakening control over economic stability.

Social Unrest:

Austerity sparked protests (e.g., 1978 "IMF Riots"), but the government could not reverse policies without breaching loan terms.

Sovereignty Impact: Democratic responsiveness to citizens was constrained by IMF conditionalities.

Philippines: Privatization and Liberalization

Privatization of State Assets:

During the 1980s debt crisis, the IMF required privatization of utilities, transport, and energy sectors. This led to foreign ownership of critical infrastructure (e.g., water systems in Manila).

Sovereignty Impact: Loss of control over strategic industries to foreign entities, reducing economic self-determination.

Trade Liberalization:

SAPs forced tariff reductions and deregulation, flooding markets with imports and undermining local industri

IMF interventions often forcing recipient countries to accept IMF’s stringent structural adjustment programs (SAPs) when offering financial assistance, while those plans will undermine those countries’ sovereignty. 

In Philippines, IMF imposed economic reforms of reducing government expenditures in order to avoid economic crisis. However, making the Philippines’ finical budgets is Philippines’ sovereignty, which should not been interference by other countries and organizations. Moreover, those budgets are the investments for healthcare and educations and so on. Forcing government to cut their budgets only for economic growth and regardless of social welfare, reduce the living conditions for philippine, leading increase in emigration, undermining Philippines sovereignty.

And I found a comment about the disaster caused by IMF in Philippines on internet, which lead me to realize the aftermath of IMF undermining Philippines' sovereign is far more destructive than I previous thoughts, and far more complicated than my ability to analyzed it. So, I'd like to copy the original text below. Here is the source: https://www.tni.org/en/article/is-the-structural-adjustment-approach-really-and-trully-dead

Walden Bello:"The Philippines' experience under adjustment was representative of the Third World experience. Between 1980 and 1999, the Philippines became the recipient of nine structural adjustment loans from the World Bank, and participated in three stand-by programs, two extended fund programs, and one precautionary stand-by arrangement with the IMF. The country, in short, was in continuous adjustment for nearly 20 years, its macroeconomic policies being micro-managed by the Bretton Woods twins.

The first phase of adjustment, which focused on trade liberalization, saw quantitative restrictions removed on more than 900 items, while the nominal average tariff protection was brought down to 28% in 1985 from 43% in 1981. But the program failed to factor in the onset of a global recession, so that instead of rising, exports fell, while imports coming in to take advantage of the liberalized regime severely eroded the home industries. As the late economist Charles Lindsay noted, "Whatever the merits of the SAL, its timing was deplorable." Instead of allowing the government to set in motion counter-cyclical mechanisms to arrest the decline of private sector activity, the structural adjustment framework intensified the crisis with its policy of high interest rates and tight government budgets. Not surprisingly, the GNP shrank precipitously two years in a row, contributing to the political crisis that resulted in the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986.

Under Corazon Aquino, the second phase of adjustment saw economic recovery subordinated to the repayment of the foreign debt of the country's $26 billion foreign debt. This was achieved via fiscal austerity and more intensified export of natural resources and export-oriented production. A financial hemorrhage ensued, with the net transfer of financial resources coming to a negative $1.3 billion a year on average between 1986 and 1981, according to the Freedom from Debt Coalition. To service the debt, the Aquino administration was forced to borrow heavily from domestic financial sources, forcing it to channel much of its budgetary expenditures from development and social spending to meeting both domestic and foreign debt obligations. By 1987, some 50% of the budget was going to service the national debt.

Not surprisingly, this "model debtor" via structural adjustment institutionalized stagnation, with the country registering zero average GNP growth between 1983 and 1993. Stagnation led to a worsening of social conditions, with families living under the poverty line coming to 46.5% of all families in 1991 and the share of the national income going to the lowest 20% of families dropping to 4.7% in 1991 from 5.2% in 1985. The Philippines also provided one of the best documented studies of the correlation between environmental destruction and structural adjustment, with a World Resources Institute study concluding that adjustment "created so much unemployment that migration patterns changed drastically. The large migration flows to Manila declined, and most migrants could only turn to open access forests, watersheds, and artisanal fisheries. Thus the major environmental effect of the economic crisis was overexploitation of these vulnerable resources."

When the Ramos administration took over in 1992, the focus of adjustment shifted back to accelerated privatization, deregulation, and liberalization of trade, investment and finance. Petron and several government enterprises and services passed to the private sector; a substantially free-trade regime was targetted for 2004, when tariff rates would be reduced to a uniform 5% or less for all products; and nationality restrictions on foreign investment were relaxed considerably. Capital account liberalization, an IMF prescription, resulted in massive inflows of speculative capital into the financial and real estate sector, triggering an artificial boom in Manila. But the liberalized capital account also became the wide highway through which billions of dollars exited in 1997 and 1998, at the onset of the Asian financial crisis, bringing the GDP growth rate to below zero in 1998.

Adjusted and readjusted for nearly 20 years, Manila simply could not climb out of a deepening hole."

(Vincent)