{"id":132789,"date":"2023-03-07T17:12:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T00:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=132789"},"modified":"2023-03-07T17:12:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T00:12:57","slug":"beijing-okays-restructuring-of-loans-to-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/03\/07\/beijing-okays-restructuring-of-loans-to-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing okays restructuring of loans to Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy RTHK<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s president said on Tuesday that China had agreed to restructure its loans to the bankrupt island nation, clearing the final obstacle to a long-awaited International Monetary Fund bailout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An unprecedented economic crisis has seen Sri Lanka&#8217;s 22 million people suffer acute food, fuel and medicine shortages, along with extended blackouts and runaway inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Ranil Wickremesinghe&#8217;s government has been working to repair Sri Lanka&#8217;s ruined finances and secure the sorely needed IMF rescue package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it was held up by debt negotiations with China, its largest bilateral creditor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wickremesinghe told parliament Beijing had now agreed to a restructuring and that he expected the first tranche from the Washington-based lender&#8217;s promised US$2.9 billion in funds to be released within the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We have done our part, I hope the IMF will do theirs,&#8221; he said in a special address to lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wickremesinghe said the state-owned Exim Bank of China had sent a letter to the IMF on Monday night signalling its willingness to go ahead with a restructuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Sri Lanka has now received financing assurances from all major bilateral creditors,&#8221; said Krishna Srinivasan, director of the IMF&#8217;s Asia and Pacific Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This paves the way for the fund&#8217;s board to approve a loan earlier agreed upon by its staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Approval by the board would also catalyze financing from other creditors, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The arrangement will help authorities&#8217; programme of ambitious reforms to aid Sri Lanka in emerging from its current crisis, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka defaulted on its US$46 billion foreign debt last April. (AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy RTHK Sri Lanka&#8217;s president said on Tuesday that China had agreed to restructure its loans to the bankrupt island nation, clearing the final obstacle to a long-awaited International Monetary Fund bailout. An unprecedented economic crisis has seen Sri Lanka&#8217;s 22 million people suffer acute food, fuel and medicine shortages, along with extended blackouts and [&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-132789","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\/132789","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=132789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}