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For the first time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) discloses the number of documents that are kept secret for political or economic reasons of its member countries. According to the released report, Latin American governments are the ones registering the highest rates of censorship of the institution. Antipopular policies recommended by the Fund and implemented by governments may be one of the reasons.

The report entitled "Key Trends in Implementation of the Fund’s Transparency Policy" is the first issue of a document to be published on an annual basis by the IMF, aiming at redressing its “hardly transparent” image.

This report, released early in February, shows a series of tables providing only statistical information on the different documents produced and received by the institution throughout its fiscal year: the number of documents published, trends in publication lags and conditions of publication.

As a result it can be noticed that Latin American governments are the ones that most commonly “forbid” the institution from publishing their documents. The report indicates that within the fiscal year 2005 – from November 2004 to October 2005 – 15 documents corresponding to Latin America and the Caribbean (the IMF’s Western Hemisphere) that had been considered by the IMF Executive Board were left unpublished, out of a total of 41. Therefore, 37 per cent of documents were censored.

This rate is practically similar to that of previous years, since in the fiscal year 2004 the rate of unpublished documents amounted to 36 per cent and in 2003 to 38 per cent.

With regards to the 26 documents that were indeed released, their publication took place, on average, 35 days after they had been considered by the Executive Board, although for 12 of them, publication took place more than two months later. Even so, this delay implies an improvement if compared to the average of 65 days in fiscal year 2004 and the average of 50 days in fiscal year 2003.

Some of these documents had sections that were deleted, being considered by governments as “particularly delicate” or “market-sensitive information”. The most commonly quoted example by IMF spokespeople is related to the monetary policy or the exchange rate target, since it is argued that their publication could have an immediate effect on currency rates.

If compared to the rest of the world, Latin American governments are the ones most prone to hiding information. The mean rate of unpublished documents in emerging countries stands at 21 per cent while developed countries, in the last two years, have approved the publication of 100 per cent of documents affecting them.

Among “secret” documents there are those detailing the commitments undertaken when a country signs a credit agreement with the institutiona and those analyzing the economic performance of the country under evaluation. In this kind of agreements, governments commit themselves, urged by the IMF, to carry out strong fiscal adjustments and economic reforms in exchange for “cheap” loans granted by the Fund. As stated by the IMF in its report, the decision not to publish documents is made by the government and not by the Fund, which certainly releases them unless requested otherwise.

The report does not describe the content of these documents but instead discloses – by way of omission – a list of countries that have prevented the publication of any document between November 2003 and October 31 2005. The following are among them: Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, Paraguay, Panama and Peru.

The first three cases can come as a surprise. In theory, the relationship between Brazil and the IMF in recent years has been “good” and at the end of last year the government of Lula announced the cancellation of its debt to the institution. In Ecuador, in turn, the President accepted the resignation of his Economy Minister in mid-2005, amidst an atmosphere of tension with the institution resulting from strong pressures in terms of economic policy. Finally, in Venezuela, President Chávez has shown intolerance towards the comments made by IMF representatives and currently has no agreements in force with the Fund.

An example to the contrary is that of Argentina, since the country is included in the list of members that have published all information being considered by the Executive Board. Argentina has had a very conflictive relationship with the IMF since it declared default in December 2001 and later on negotiated the swap of part of its external debt. Notwithstanding the fact that the strong pressures exerted by the institution throughout that period were made public, the government authorized the publication of all documents.

Within this context, it remains then to be known what the content of unpublished documents was and the reasons why governments did not make such information public. Several hypotheses may be possible: will it be the intention of some Latin American governments to hide IMF pressures for reforms?, will it be really governments the ones making decisions to this respect?, or will it be just economic reasons?

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