{"id":149743,"date":"2025-05-22T15:57:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T22:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=149743"},"modified":"2025-05-22T15:57:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T22:57:33","slug":"sri-lanka-cuts-lending-rate-as-economy-slowly-recovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/05\/22\/sri-lanka-cuts-lending-rate-as-economy-slowly-recovers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka cuts lending rate as economy slowly recovers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Peninsularqatar<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"Photo<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo by (Fazeena Saleem\/The Peninsula.)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>Follow usnews<\/a>Copy<\/a>A+<\/a>A-<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFP<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Colombo:Sri Lanka’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate on Thursday, the first reduction in six months, with signs that the crisis-hit nation was emerging from its worst economic downturn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The single policy rate was reduced by 25 basis points to 7.75 percent, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said in a statement, following a review by its Monetary Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This measured easing of the monetary policy stance will support steering inflation towards the target of 5.0 percent, amidst global uncertainties and current subdued inflationary pressures,” the statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Recent leading economic indicators reflect sustained progress in domestic economic activity,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The South Asian country, which declared a sovereign default on its $46 billion external debt in April 2022, has restructured its bilateral loans and international bonds, giving it more time to repay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inflation, which peaked at nearly 70 percent in September 2023, has dropped sharply and the country has been experiencing deflation since September last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Monetary Fund, which granted a $2.9 billion bailout loan in early 2023, says Sri Lanka is slowly emerging from its crisis and that the economy has turned around, although risks remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy The Peninsularqatar Photo by (Fazeena Saleem\/The Peninsula.)Follow usnewsCopyA+A- AFP Colombo:Sri Lanka’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate on Thursday, the first reduction in six months, with signs that the crisis-hit nation was emerging from its worst economic downturn. The single policy rate was reduced by 25 basis points to 7.75 percent, the Central […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149743","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=149743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}