The International Monetary Fund's managing director criticized commercial banks Tuesday for not lending enough to Third World nations. Michel Camdessus, addressing the City University Business School in London, said developing countries needed new loans to grow out of their debts. He said the IMF doesn't have the resources to provide such loans, and although larger commercial banks do, they haven't shown enough willingnes to extend new credit. ``The record is plain. Last year, net bank lending to countries with debt-servicing problems was negligible at best; two years before, it was negative,'' Camdessus said. ``It isn't only the amount of financing that matters. It is also the timeliness of financing and the attitude of the banks in responding to the indebted countries' efforts and needs.'' He added: ``This inevitably sends the wrong signal to countries contemplating bolder efforts and it calls into question the notion that our strategy is a cooperative one oriented to growth.'' Camdessus noted that many indebted countries have made progress in adopting IMF-agreed programs, but the former governor of the French central bank said the shift toward economic reform in the developing world ``risks being interrupted, and even reversed, because of doubts concerning the availability of financial support.'' IMF programs usually involve trimming government spending and reducing the size of the public sector, loosening exchange rate and trade policy and encouraging export-led growth. Camdessus' criticism of the conduct of commercial banks, which are carrying billions of dollars worth of possible bad debts, follows a sharper attack two weeks ago from David Mulford, assistant U.S. Treasury secretary. Mulford said the banks had taken a passive approach to debt crisis and he said that all major innovations for resolving the crisis had come from the debtor countries themselves. Commercial bankers have criticized the IMF and many governments for refusing to grant easier repayment terms on their own loans to developing countries, but have expected banks to take losses on their lending.
