Our artisans are engaged in export activities directly related to foreign trade. Our first, second and third goal is to bring in much needed foreign exchange to Sri Lanka. We are working towards this goal.
Our country went through a severe economic crisis three years ago. It is a situation where we as a country are unable to repay our domestic and foreign debt.
Due to this crisis, the country fell into an economic abyss. We needed solutions to get out of this abyss. At that time, the IMF One group said let’s go and another group said not to go. But in a short period of time, the social and economic difficulties experienced by the people of the country increased day by day. We lost foreign exchange for essential imports. During this, the country was declared vanguard. It is against this backdrop that the current government has initiated negotiations to obtain a loan facility from the International Monetary Fund.
Credit facility available to Sri Lanka in March 2023. USD 2.9 billion extended credit facility over 48 months. On one hand, we are happy to avail this credit facility. That’s kind of a win. This temporarily helped Sri Lanka to recover from the economic crisis. If this credit facility is to be properly extended to the country, an environment must be created in the country to repay the domestic and foreign debt burden of the government.
Accordingly, domestic credit was improved first. Second, bilateral and multilateral external debt restructuring was initiated. As of today, an agreement has been signed to carry out those activities. But we don’t know what consensus is. They will be tabled in Parliament.
Bilateral debt restructuring is key here. An even more important aspect is that futures contracts will be made with international sovereign bond creditors.
Our domestic and foreign debt is $100 billion. It’s even harder to say exactly what incentives will be available to repay that amount. Based on these, we continue to take loans and repay loans. As the amount of debt to pay increases, so does stress. To reduce that pressure, we need to build a strong economic system that can service our debt. We need to increase our export earnings. Also efforts should be made to increase the revenue for the government and utilize the government expenditure with maximum efficiency and effectiveness”.
