{"id":83555,"date":"2018-11-21T12:46:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T19:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83555"},"modified":"2018-11-21T12:46:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T19:46:02","slug":"imf-delays-sri-lankas-loan-discussion-on-political-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/21\/imf-delays-sri-lankas-loan-discussion-on-political-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF delays Sri Lanka\u2019s loan discussion on political crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Reuters – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday it had delayed discussions on Sri Lanka\u2019s next loan tranche due to the country\u2019s political crisis.<\/p>\n

The IMF has disbursed over $1 billion out of a $1.5 billion three-year extended fund facility (EFF) loan it agreed in 2016. The aim was to avert a financial crisis and support the economic reform agenda of the government then in power.<\/p>\n

That government was sacked on Oct. 26 by President Maithripala Sirisena due to differences with former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was backing social market economic policies.<\/p>\n

Since the removal of Wickremesinghe, Sirisena has dissolved the parliament and called for a fresh election, but the Supreme Court last week ordered a suspension of that decree until it had heard petitions challenging the move as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

In September, the IMF said its mission had made significant progress toward reaching a staff-level agreement with the government on completing the fifth review of the EFF and discussions will continue during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in October\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday an IMF spokesman told Reuters via email: We are monitoring the situation and remain in close contact with our technical counterparts in Sri Lanka.\u201d<\/p>\n

Program discussions on the 5th review of the IMF\u2019s Extended Fund Facility are currently on hold, pending clarity on the political situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

After completion of the fifth review Sri Lanka would expect to receive a sixth tranche of about $250 million. The total loan was expected to have been disbursed with a seventh tranche by mid 2019.<\/p>\n

The political crisis has hit the economy. Already the rupee currency has fallen about 1.8 percent since the crisis unfolded last month. On Monday, the rupee fell to a record low of 177.20 per dollar. Foreign investors have pulled out more than 30 billion rupees ($169.5 million) since the crisis unfolded on Oct. 26.<\/p>\n

Moody\u2019s also downgraded Sri Lanka on Tuesday for the first time since it started rating the country in 2010, blaming a political crisis for exacerbating already problematic finances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana Reuters – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday it had delayed discussions on Sri Lanka\u2019s next loan tranche due to the country\u2019s political crisis. The IMF has disbursed over $1 billion out of a $1.5 billion three-year extended fund facility (EFF) loan it agreed in 2016. The aim was to avert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83555","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=83555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}