To ensure a continued inflow of funds, countries already devastated by debt obligations have little choice but to adhere to conditions mandated by the IMF and World Bank. Most donor countries, including Canada, condition their bilateral assistance upon a country's adoption of structural adjustment programmes. SAPs are designed to improve a country's foreign investment climate by eliminating trade and investment regulations, to boost foreign exchange earnings by promoting exports, and to reduce government deficits through cuts in spending. Canadians can begin to identify with the citizens of developing nations when we experience similar SAP-like cutbacks to health, education and other basic social services. The World Bank and the IMF argue that SAPs are necessary to bring a developing country from crisis to economic recovery and growth.
Economic growth driven by private sector foreign investment is seen as the key to development.
Many groups argue that SAPs impose harsh economic measures which deepen poverty, undermine food security, and self-reliance and lead to unsustainable resource exploitation, environmental destruction, and population dislocation and displacement. They believe SAP policies have increased the gap between rich and poor in both local and global terms. Despite claims to the contrary, World Bank-imposed SAPs have paid little or no attention to their environmental impact. SAPs call for increased exports to generate foreign exchange to service debt. The most important exports of developing countries include timber, oil and natural gas, minerals, cash crops, and fisheries exports.