Sri Lanka still at the ‘beginning of the journey’ - Deputy Minister on IMF approving 4th tranche

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma says that given the situation the country was in, the IMF Executive Board approving the fourth tranche of the bailout package is an important milestone.

“It’s an important outcome because it adds up to the equation on continuation and consistency on the path to create the economic stability,” he told reporters in Colombo today (01).

The IMF Executive Board on Friday completed the third review under the 48-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) Arrangement for Sri Lanka, allowing the government to draw SDR 254 million (about US$334 million).

The deputy minister stated that contrary to the belief of many, the government took several rational measures, calculation decisions in order to stabilize the economy. 

“In this process, one of them was to stay within the IMF program,” he said, adding that another was to facilitate the debt restructuring program support the business ecosystem, facilitate the market mechanism to continue, intervene in a proportionate approach whenever it was necessary particularly when the prevailing mechanisms were unable to deliver the mandate of the people and expectations of the people. 

Suriyapperuma emphasized that within this process, there are several priorities that as a government they need to look into with one of them being the creation of macro-level economic stability. 

“With a lot of effort and support from everyone, the present government was able to achieve that objective within a short period of time,” he declared. . 

“That does not mean the journey is completed.” 

“But we are at a critical point that we have achieved a lot within a short period of time, in some cases to exceed the expectations of some of the parties involved in these process,” the deputy minister said, addressing a press briefing in Colombo. 

He clarified that based on the outcome of the IMF evaluation, approximately USD $334 million will be released as a result of the positive outcome and that will take the total disbursements up to USD $1.34 billion of the total package of nearly USD $2.9 billion over a 48-months period that it is to be delivered.