The International Monetary Fund is working with other multilateral lenders including the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on financing programmes for Sri Lanka, the IMF’s Deputy Director for Asia Pacific says.
According to Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf, policies under other multilateral lenders in their areas of expertise will be important to resolve Sri Lanka’s long-term growth problems.
Meanwhile, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stated that the global financial agency is pressing for a more debt resolution mechanism.
“Sri Lanka’s financing programs would help for closing the financing gap. But she said that the policies under the other multilateral lenders in their areas of expertise will be important to resolve Sri Lanka’s longer term growth problems,” she said.
Responding to a question on a possible downgrade of Sri Lanka, Anne-Marie Gulde said that Sri Lanka is a middle-income country and remains a middle-income country even with the decline in GDP.
Delivering the opening remarks at the press conference for the 2022 Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group (WBG), Kristalina Georgieva said, “We want the G20 Common Framework to become more predictable, with clear guidelines and equality of treatment for all creditors, public and private.”
She also remarked that the IMF is also looking for ways to expand that kind of donor coordination to middle-income countries, such as Sri Lanka.
“There is a lot to do this week. We must act urgently, and act together to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” Georgieva said further.
Sri Lanka’s government officials from the finance ministry and the central bank held its first in-person meeting with the country’s largest sovereign overseas bondholders in Washington on Thursday
The gathering on the sideline of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings convened amid debt restructuring talks for $13 billion. Some private creditors also joined the meeting virtually, the sources said.
Amundi Asset Management, BlackRock, HBK Capital Management, and T. Rowe Price Associates Inc are among members of the creditor group’s steering committee.
The move comes after the island nation of 22 million fell into default after a 30-day grace period on a $78 million coupon payment expired earlier this year.
The government did not provide any proposal on how a debt restructuring would look, said several top officials who asked not to be named because the talks are private.
“It was a good exchange, but we are still at an early stage,” they said, adding that creditors urged the government to provide information in real time on the country’s debt-sustainability analysis.
Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe and Treasury Secretary Mahinda Siriwardena led the meeting from the government side, along with representatives of financial and legal advisers Lazard and Clifford Chance, the sources said.
Sri Lanka, which is struggling with its worst economic crisis in more than seven decades, reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF for a $2.9 billion loan in September, contingent on it receiving financing assurances from official creditors.
Deputy Director, Asia and Pacific Department at the International Monetary Fund, Anne-Marie Gulde, said that the conditions involve securing assurances from bilateral creditors and dealing with the private sector debt.
