PRSPs: Good News for the Poor?

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), to which they are linked were born out of a crisis of criticism affecting the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The success of Jubille 200 and public demands for rapid movement towards thir world debt cancellation were accompanied by calls for effective social conditionality on the use of the resources to be released. While making proposals to marginally accelerate the debt-relief process, the Bank and IMF also struggled to arrive at a system of social conditionality that would answer the calls for their critics. The result has been PRSPs. This paper represents Worlds Vision's assessment of the reasons for hope and concern regarding PRSPs. It gives a background to the formation of PRSPs and Interim PRSPs, and examines PRSPs in the context of participatory process; civil society and the poor; ownership; accountability; poverty reduction and economic policy; resources for development; liberalisation of northern markets; rights-based economics; income distribution; conflict reduction; and measures of impact. In the final conclusions the author points out that differences between key conceptual documents and the more operationally oriented sourcebook, may prove to be decisive in determining whether PRSPs mark a bold new step or a repetition of tired, and largely discredited, policies.