President warns of delay in IMF deal amid China, India issues
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka is unlikely to get an International Monetary Fund (IMF) deal in December as originally expected with delays in dealing with China and India, which are not in the Paris Club, as well as other ‘bilateral issues’, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has said.
Sri Lanka has to get ‘creditor assurances’ on debt restructuring from bilateral lenders before the IMF’s executive board endorses a reform program formally.
Unlike other countries which got into default, two out of three main creditors of Sri Lanka are out of the Paris Club of creditors who had already had a well-oiled mechanism for dealing with debt re-structuring.
“I first went to the Paris Club where all the creditors were from the West and Japan,” President Wickremesinghe told a forum of tea factory owners in Colombo on Sunday (Oct 30).
“However, we are in a unique position today, where out of our three main creditors, only one belongs to the Paris Club. Japan.
“The other two are not in the Paris Club. They are India and China,” he said, noting that China had started debt restructuring with Zambia.
However, he said there were also ‘bilateral issues’ to deal with, but did not elaborate, but said he had already started discussions with Japan and now with India and China.
“We get down to a common platform of how we can resolve it while we also have discussions on bilateral issues that affect each other’s countries.”
China has just finished its party conference where senior officials had changed.
“If we can move and come to an agreement by December, which means coming to an agreement by mid-November, and going up to the IMF Board in mid-December, we will gain a big advantage,” Wickremesinghe said.
“However, I don’t know whether we can do it for the simple reason that in China, the focus has started now after the party conference. However, we must aim to have it by January.”
-economynext.com
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.