International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released its flagship biannual report ‘World Economic Outlook’ (WEO) with the subtitle for the October edition as ‘Global economy in flux, prospects remain weak’; while the first edition for the current year was released earlier in April.

The writers of the report while correctly indicate ‘…rules of the global economy are in flux’ and that ‘…uncertainty about the stability and trajectory of the global economy remains acute’ there is a hidden paradox in the WEO report as well, and that is a lack of clarity to see the obvious in terms of the repeated mistake to find solutions in a neoliberal milieu, which in itself is the main source of the problem that continues to generate this ‘flux’, and ‘uncertainty’.

Clearly, the source of problem, as has been strongly established overall over the last four decades or so, is the neoliberal assault, and within that, practice of over-board austerity, procyclical policy, and lack of a meaningful rule-based system that guards developing countries in particular from volatile capital movements in a pro-cyclical way, whereby in economic downturn when capital is needed the most it leaves for safer heavens of developed countries.

Hence, overall, this neoliberal policy, among producing a number of other negative outcomes, especially in developing countries, like diminishing capacity of public sector delivery under over-board outsourcing, and limiting its role as mainly a facilitator to private sector, hurts their fiscal space through producing unjustifiably large interest payments-related spending needs, and hurdles them in terms of improving resilience as a consequence of laidback role of government, while on the external front it produces lack of multilateral spirit as private sector led economies........

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