All borrowings since 2016 used to settle Rajapaksa loans, Mangala fires back

Responding to the Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa’s statement explaining his position regarding the debt crisis of the Yahapalana government, Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera that all the money the current government has borrowed since 2016 was to repay the loans of the Rajapaksa regime.

In his response, Samaraweera says that the Rajapaksas borrowed high-interest foreign debt and spent them on ‘White Elephant construction and consumer imports’.

He points out that the Rajapaksa regime switched the National Savings Bank chairman and directed the NSB to obtain $750 million from international markets at the highest ever interest rate of 8.9 percent.

According to Samaraweera, 31% of government spending is spent on the interest payment of the foreign debt taken by the Rajapaksas.

The current regime had to borrow more to pay back these loans and run the country, stated the Finance Minister.

Samaraweera further charged that “they [Rajapaksas] took a profitable, well-managed and rapidly expanding airline and ran it to the ground. After they nationalized Sri Lankan because the CEO did his job and followed the rules, it made consistent losses.”

Stating that the current regime stabilized the economy despite this legacy, the finance minister pointed out that Sri Lanka had its first non-trivial primary surplus in 63 years in 2018, which means that, leaving aside interest payments, the country’s revenue was greater than its expenditure for the first time in over six decades

The complete statement issued by the Minister of Finance:

Finance Minister's resp... by Ada Derana on Scribd