BONN, Sept 21 (AFP) - An advisor to the new Russian government
attacked the International Monetary Fund and especially its head
Michel Camdessus in an interview published Monday in the Germany
economic daily Handelsblatt.
Leonid Abalkin, 68, formerly an advisor to the last Soviet
president, Mikhail Gorbachev, asserted: "If a dictatorship comes to
power in Russia we will have Michel Camdessus, director of the IMF,
to thank.A
Abalkin said the IMF's conditions for aid could bring about the
collapse of Russia's whole governmental system.
His own recipe for getting the country out of its crisis, which
he said he had put to prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, included
expanding the money supply, indexing wages and pensions on the
inflation rate and tight controls on the currency market.
While ruling out a return to a communist-style planned economy,
Abalkin said that increasing the money supply by not more than 40
percent would stimulate economic growth.
He noted that this had occurred in the first eight months of
1997, with an increase in the money supply of 37 percent, while
inflation had remained very low.
The problems came later when the money was withdrawn from
circulation, Abalkin said, adding: "Without money there is no
production." |
