{"id":122523,"date":"2022-02-04T14:10:13","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T21:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=122523"},"modified":"2022-02-04T14:10:13","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T21:10:13","slug":"imf-says-it-is-ready-to-help-sri-lanka-if-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/02\/04\/imf-says-it-is-ready-to-help-sri-lanka-if-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF says it is \u2018ready\u2019 to help Sri Lanka if asked"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The International Monetary Fund is ready to discuss options\u201d with Sri Lanka if the government asks for financial support, its mission chief for the island told AFP on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disastrous impact on Sri Lanka\u2019s economy, which has been deprived of its tourism bonanza while workers\u2019 remittances from abroad have fallen sharply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the IMF has not received a request for financial support from Sri Lanka, the staff stands ready to discuss options if requested,\u201d mission chief Masahiro Nozaki said in a written statement to AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Wednesday, Sri Lanka\u2019s finance minister announced the country had sought advice from the fund and was considering seeking an international bailout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This referred to an ongoing technical assistance mission by the IMF,\u201d Nozaki said Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The mission aims to strengthen the Macro Fiscal Unit at the Ministry of Finance and focuses on training staff at the Unit, as part of our capacity development activities,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The mission is being conducted virtually until February 9,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IMF continues to closely monitor economic and policy developments in Sri Lanka,\u201d Nozaki added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said a fund team had visited Colombo in December last year as part of the annual bilateral discussions to review economic developments and policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A board meeting will be held at the end of February to review the latest economic data from the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana The International Monetary Fund is ready to discuss options\u201d with Sri Lanka if the government asks for financial support, its mission chief for the island told AFP on Thursday. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disastrous impact on Sri Lanka\u2019s economy, which has been deprived of its tourism bonanza while workers\u2019 remittances from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}