Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaks at the G-20 news conference during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings at the International Monetary Fund Headquarters in Washington on April 13, 2023. , Photo Credit: AP
India, Japan and France have announced a common platform for talks between creditors Sri Lanka’s Debt Restructuring Program who is struggling with worst economic crisis,
Representatives of the three creditor countries, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, held a press briefing on the margins of the annual spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington on April 13.
“The objective of the event was to showcase multilateral cooperation among creditors regarding the debt restructuring process with Sri Lanka,” said an official statement.
Ms. Sitharaman expressed India’s commitment to support Sri Lanka In dealing with his current economic crisis.
He stressed that cooperation among creditors was important to ensure transparency and equity in debt restructuring discussions.
Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki called the launch of the common platform a historic development. “To be able to start this negotiation process gathering a broad-based group of creditors is a historic result,” he told reporters at the news conference.
“This committee is open to all creditors,” he said, expressing hope that China, Sri Lanka’s largest creditor, would join the initiative launched by this year’s G7 chair Japan.
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French Treasury Director General Emmanuel Moulin also joined Ms Sitharaman and Mr Suzuki at the press conference.
Virtually joining the launch of the debt restructuring negotiation process, President Wickremesinghe said that Sri Lanka is committed to continuing to engage with all creditor countries and other stakeholders in a transparent manner based on the principles of comparable treatment.
Mr Wickremesinghe said he would present the agreement with the IMF for the $2.9 billion bailout to parliament, obtain approval and introduce legislation to ensure its implementation, his office said.
Read also: IMF approves $3 billion bailout for Sri Lanka; Tackling corruption is an important condition
Sri Lanka last month secured a $2.9 billion program from the IMF to deal with its huge debt burden.
The Washington-based global lender had made Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring a condition for granting the $2.9 billion bailout.
The Executive Board of the IMF approved a 48-month extended arrangement under its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) with an amount of SDR 2.286 billion to Sri Lanka following financing assurances from creditors.
Sri Lanka, which received the first tranche of the $3 billion bailout programme, has already completed one tranche to pay off an Indian line of credit that was extended early last year just before the island nation announced debt default. was received in
The 17th IMF bailout in Sri Lanka’s history was approved after lengthy discussions on Colombo’s unsustainable debt.
Sri Lanka owes $7.1 billion to bilateral creditors, $3 billion to China, $2.4 billion to the Paris Club and $1.6 billion to India, according to official data from the Sri Lankan government.
Sri Lanka will be hit by an unprecedented financial crisis in 2022, the worst since its independence from Britain in 1948, fueled by a severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves, sparking political turmoil in the country that has led to the all-powerful Rajapaksa family Was expelled.