MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday criticized the use of GDP growth as a yardstick of development, since it hides inequality, but stuck to his forecast of a 2% expansion this year after the International Monetary Fund lowered its estimate.

Apparently surprised when asked about the adjustment in his early morning news conference, Lopez Obrador responded: “They cut us again?” He then said the organization should apologize for its record of prescribing policies to poor nations.

“I don’t have much confidence in these organizations. .. They were the ones who pushed neoliberal economics in Mexico,” said the president, who describes his government as a transformation to a different economic model from an era of privatizations and corruption.

Lopez Obrador invited economists at the IMF and other “technocrats” to a discussion about whether growth was the same as development.

He said Mexico was not just going to measure success in fighting poverty by how much its GDP expanded, saying the government would also focus on salaries, wealth distribution and access to education and health services.

The IMF, set up in the 1940s with an objective to promote global financial stability, bailed out Latin American nations during debt crises in the 1980s. In return, it demanded strict budgetary austerity that critics say worsened poverty.

On Tuesday, the Washington-based organization lowered its 2019 forecast for global growth, citing trade and Brexit uncertainties as the main factors that had driven the change.

It slashed its growth expectation for Latin America in 2019 by more than half compared with estimates from just three months ago, citing its downgrades to growth estimates in both Brazil and Mexico, the region’s largest economies.

Preliminary data for Mexico’s second-quarter growth is due to be published on July 31, and some private economists predict a second quarter of contraction. This has sparked a debate over whether that would put Mexico into recession.