COLOMBO – The Sri Lankan government has cancelled a two-day Parliament debate on the recently concluded bilateral debt restructuring after the opposition criticized that the restructuring deal is far from over and the death of a former opposition and Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader Rajavarothiyam Sampanthan, whose remains will lie-in-state in the Parliament on Wednesday (3). Sampanthan, passed away in the late hours of Sunday (June 30).
The debate on bilateral debt restructuring was scheduled for Tuesday (2) and Wednesday while a vote on the debt restructuring deal was to be held at the end of the debate on Wednesday.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government reached a US$ 10 billion bilateral debt deal with the members of the Paris Club as well as China last week.
Both opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and leftist National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake have dismissed the announcement of Sri Lanka’s debt deferment agreement with bilateral creditors, pointing instead to negotiations still ongoing with commercial creditors.
“The debate and the vote on the bilateral debt restructuring are likely to be rescheduled when the Parliament sessions start on July 9,” said a source who was knowledge on the party leaders’ meeting over the cancellation of the debate.
“There is an opposition criticism that they still have not got the whole documents on the debt restructuring deal,” he explained.
The latest deal with the bilateral creditors is crucial for the island nation to resume a raft of infrastructure projects that have been suspended after the declaration of bankruptcy in April 2022.
Cabinet Spokesman Bandula Gunawardena on Monday (1) said a committee has been appointed to look into the revisions of the contracts related to all suspended projects funded by bilateral creditors.
Meanwhile, chief opposition whip Laksham Kiriella responding to questions as to why the two-day debate had been postponed, said there would be no point debating the agreement since Sri Lanka had signed only two out of the three bilateral debt agreements,
“They said the agreements signed by the government would not be presented on Tuesday. We noted that though the government said they had signed those agreements, they actually hadn’t. There are three agreements. Two of them have been signed. The third hasn’t been signed yet,” he claimed, adding, “There is no point having a debate without the third agreement because it is the third agreement that reveals the whole picture.”
Meanwhile, Parliament’s business committee met on Monday where it was decided that President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s address to parliament on debt restructuring will be held as scheduled, though the debate would be postponed.
Deputy Speaker Ajith Rajapaksha told reporters that only the president’s speech would be held on Tuesday.
“There is no special reason for this,” he said.
-economynext.com
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