Throughout the two days of talks with the IMF authorities, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake reiterated Sri Lanka’s place that a few of the inflexible IMF situations have to be watered right down to grant reduction to the general public.
| Picture Credit score: AFP
The Sri Lankan authorities has introduced a long-delayed debt restructuring settlement with its sovereign bondholders, in a significant reduction to the cash-strapped island nation.
In an announcement on Friday (October 4, 2024), the Ministry of Finance stated it reached an settlement with representatives of its worldwide and native holders of Worldwide Sovereign Bonds (ISB) on September 19, 2024.
Sri Lankan authorities have “accomplished their consultations with Sri Lanka’s Official Creditor Committee (OCC) and the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF),” stated the assertion from the Treasury.
It added that the settlement is appropriate with the comparative therapy precept.
The announcement got here as the brand new Nationwide Individuals’s Energy (NPP) authorities led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake expressed willingness to just accept the settlement through the talks held with the visiting IMF delegation in Colombo on Thursday and Friday (October 3 and 4, 2024)
Throughout the two days of talks, Mr. Dissanayake reiterated Sri Lanka’s place that a few of the inflexible IMF situations have to be watered right down to grant reduction to the general public.
The IMF made exterior debt restructuring conditional to the $2.9 billion four-year facility clinched in March 2023 by the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration.
Sri Lanka has already obtained three tranches of about $360 million every below the Prolonged Fund Facility. The third tranche of the bailout bundle was launched in mid-June because the Washington-headquartered world lender stated on August 2, 2024, that Sri Lanka’s financial reform programme had yielded good outcomes.
Days earlier than the presidential elections, the then Mr. Wickremesinghe-led authorities, which undertook the laborious activity of debt restructuring, introduced an in-principle settlement with exterior business collectors for the restructuring of roughly $17.5 billion of exterior business money owed.
Mr. Wickremesinghe, who was additionally the Finance Minister, was defeated within the presidential election final month.
The NPP within the run-up to the election had known as the IMF deal a “demise entice” and vowed to renegotiate it.
In April 2022, the island nation declared its first-ever sovereign default since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. The unprecedented monetary disaster led Mr. Wickremesinghe’s predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa to stop workplace in 2022 amid civil unrest.
Printed – October 05, 2024 12:17 pm IST
