WASHINGTON, Dec 23: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had foreseen the ongoing South-East Asian crisis and had warned the tiger economies to take corrective measures with despatch but the advice went unheeded, IMF has said.

The advice the IMF gives member states is supposed to be confidential but increasingly IMF officials have been trying to show that they foresaw what was coming and that it was the fault of the countries in trouble--Thailand, Indonesia and Korea, by ignoring IMF warnings.

The number two official at the IMF, Stanley Fischer, revealed at a press conference recently that the IMF warned Thailand but it ignored the warnings. The latest world economic outlook updated by the IMF makes the same point.

IMF managing director, Michael Camdessus, while speaking at a press conference in France last week, disclosed that he and Fischer travelled to Seoul in November to privately warn South Korean leaders that their economy was hurtling towards disaster."

"Mr Fischer and myself," he said, "visited Korea separately in a totally discreet way to tell the authorities that it was essential to take action without delay. They had, as many others, a tremendous difficulty in recognizing the facts."

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.