Ivory Coast and the International Monetary Fund

With the world’s largest production of cacao and cashew nuts, Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) is one of the leading economic powers in West Africa.

[citation needed] Ivory Coast's first President, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, developed an economic system founded on the extraction and redistribution of agricultural rents, mainly coming from the cocoa-coffee industry.

[4] In the 1990s, with the encouragement of the IMF, Ivory Coast implemented nationwide monetary and macroeconomic reforms targeting clientelistic networks and reducing the role of the state in the economy.

[4] However, in 2000, following the controversial election of Laurent Gbagbo, a civil war split the country between the Muslim rebel-held North and the Government controlled Christian South, leading to large-scale violence and instability.

Gbagbo’s refusal to leave power triggered post-elections violence, but with Ouattara’s mandates, Ivory Coast went back to relative political and economic stability.

Indeed, the CFA arrangements enabled French authorities to directly finance external deficits and impose some soft disinflationary adjustments, which dissuaded former colonies to go toward the IMF’s harsher lending conditions.

[4] Scholars have argued that at the time Ivory Coast was lacking the legal institutions necessary to enable the switch from a national monopoly to a neoliberal system fully opened to international multinationals.

[10] In Ivory Coast, the ECF/EFF arrangements consist mainly in macroeconomic policies and structural reforms aiming to increase tax revenue mobilization in order to address infrastructure needs and reduce budget deficit.

[11] The report acknowledged Ivory Coast's encouraging position regarding the reduction of its budget deficit to 3.0% of GDP, as well as efforts to restructure the public sector and diversify exports.

[11] Moreover, it confirmed the one-year program expansion of fiscal policy measures to 2020 in order for Ivory Coast to meet the 3.0 percent of GDP deficit objective.