{"id":129017,"date":"2022-10-06T15:45:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T22:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=129017"},"modified":"2022-10-06T15:45:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T22:45:37","slug":"japan-says-no-pact-yet-with-sri-lanka-on-debt-restructure-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/10\/06\/japan-says-no-pact-yet-with-sri-lanka-on-debt-restructure-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan says no pact yet with Sri Lanka on debt restructure talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Japan has not yet reached an agreement to co-chair a debt summit with Sri Lanka\u2019s creditors, a government official in Tokyo said on Thursday, as the island nation struggles to find a way out of a crippling economic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka has to renegotiate around $30 billion of foreign debt, including with bilateral creditors such as China, Japan and India, with one of them likely to co-chair the talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have not reached such an agreement. It might be their wishful thinking but the situation remains unchanged,\u201d a senior Japanese government official with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The denial from Tokyo came after less than an hour after Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2019s office said on Thursday that Japan had agreed to co-chair the meeting with negotiators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wickremesinghe\u2019s office later issued a clarification saying Sri Lanka had requested Japan to co-chair the summit. Japan would also help Sri Lanka in its credit restructuring process, Wickremesinghe\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Japan will stand ready to provide full support for Sri Lanka\u2019s debt restructuring providing that necessary conditions are met,\u201d the Japanese government official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with severely depleted foreign exchanges reserves leading to prolonged shortages of essentials, including fuel and food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Out of Sri Lanka\u2019s total bilateral debt of $10 billion, Japan holds around $3.5 billion worth, amounting to 4.4% of Sri Lanka\u2019s GDP, according to government and IMF data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><em><strong>Source: Reuters<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Japan has not yet reached an agreement to co-chair a debt summit with Sri Lanka\u2019s creditors, a government official in Tokyo said on Thursday, as the island nation struggles to find a way out of a crippling economic crisis. Sri Lanka has to renegotiate around $30 billion of foreign debt, including with bilateral [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imf-bailout-package"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129017","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=129017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}