Following the 1986 meeting of the SON in Tokyo, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Mr. Jacques de Larosi re, addressed the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in Geneva on 4 July 1986. A selection of his remarks on that occasion attest to his recognition of the substance of the Tokyo discussions. Some of the most pernicious human costs never even appear in standard economic statistics. Malnutrition, particularly among young children, is a leading case in point.
Malnutrition handicaps the ability to learn, to work, and to grow.
Yet this support will be progressively harder to maintain the longer adjustment continues without some payoff in terms of growth and while human conditions are deteriorating. This means, in turn, that the authorities will have to be concerned not only with whether they close the fiscal deficit but also with how they do so. The forms of adjustment that are most conducive to growth and to protection of human needs will not emerge by accident. They have to be encouraged by an appropriate set of incentives and policies. The Fund has neither the mandate, nor the staff, nor the technical capacity to design health, nutrition, or educational programes in developing countries.