Conditionality is often associated with the IMF whose low conditionality facilities include the reserve tranche, the first credit tranche, compensatory financing facility, buffer-stock financing facility, oil facilities, and the trust fund. High conditionality loans include the upper credit tranches, extended fund facility, structural adjustment facility. Since 1980 conditionality has been extended to sectoral and macro economic policies.
The main thrust of the new trend in the World Bank's policy-based lending relates to the market-oriented approach to development problems. At a general level, there is widespread agreement on the need for developing countries with mixed or market-oriented economies to ensure appropriate incentive structures to economic agents, secure adequate rates of domestic savings and productive investment and maintain appropriate levels of real exchange rates. The operational implications are, however, much less clear and there is much debate concerning the relative importance of the variables targeted under this approach, such as the role of price incentives versus the removal of non-price impediments in stimulating agricultural production; the emphasis on export promotion versus import substitution; the role of interest rates in raising the savings rate; the impact of changes in the external environment on the domestic policy framework. More controversial aspects under this approach are the respect roles of and balance between public and private sector involvement in economic activities, government policies toward foreign investment and income distribution.
In addition to the character and nature of the measures themselves, issues relating to the timing and phasing of implementation may also have negative consequences. The requirement of rapid major structural reforms and balance-of-payments adjustment may be beyond the reach of most poorer countries; political and administrative systems may not be adequate to deal with the speed at which the formulation and implementation of policy changes is advocated. There are also questions relating to policy sustainability: rigid policies phased over an insufficient time period enhance the potential for slippage.
A further specific issue is that of interdependent cross-conditionality, a situation where both the Bank and the Fund select the same policy instrument (eg the exchange rate) as the key element in their respective programmes. Developing countries seeking financial assistance are then exposed to concerted pressure and suffer from negative consequences of inter-agency cooperation.
The expansion of the World Bank's policy-based lending and the establishment of the IMF's Structural Adjustment Facility has led to a more intensive collaboration between the two institutions and the division of labour between them is no longer clear-cut. Although formal cross-conditionality does not occur between the Bretton Woods institutions, informal cross-conditionality arises in a number of cases, especially through the linkage between World Bank policy-based lending and IMF standby arrangements. In fact only three of all the World Bank sector loans approved from 1979 through 1985 occurred in countries where an IMF stabilization programme was not in place. The IMF compensatory financing facility was redesigned in 1982 from a more liberal low-conditionality form to a high-conditionality form.