The Government of Turkiye donated USD one million worth of emergency medicines and other medical supplies which are urgently required by the hospitals in Sri Lanka. The first consignment which includes Filgasstrin injections, were airlifted to Sri Lanka and were received by the officials of the Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka on 14 August, 2022.

Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Turkiye M.Rizvi Hassen during his meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkiye Mevlut Cavusoglu and the Chairman of Turkiye -Sri Lanka Parliamentarian Friendship Group Ahmet Hamdi Camli on 17August, 2022 thanked and expressed gratitude to the President of the Republic of Turkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Government of Turkiye for the generous donation and the solidarity extended to the Government and people of Sri Lanka.

The two containers of other medicines and medical supplies left the Izmit Sea Port, Turkiye on 17 August, 2022 and are expected to reach the Colombo Port by mid-September 2022.

The donation was a result of a request made by Ambassador Hassen during his meeting with the Chairman of Turkiye – Sri Lanka Parliamentarian Friendship Group Ahmet Hamdi Camli and senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkiye in the month of May 2022 to brief about the situation in Sri Lanka with a request to consider assisting the health sector of Sri Lanka. Subsequently, the Ministry of Health of Turkiye coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkiye and expedited the dispatch of the medical consignment with the approval of the President of the Republic of Turkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Embassy of Sri Lanka

Ankara

22 August, 2022

The High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Canada Harsha Kumara Navaratne graced the Annual Award Ceremony of the Canadian Immigrant Magazine on 11 August, 2022 in Toronto  where two Sri Lankan origin Canadians, Professor Janaka Ruwanpura and Dr.  Sivakumar Gulasingam were among the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants of 2022. The annual awards programme celebrates the achievements of inspiring Canadian immigrants.

Professor Ruwanpura is a scholar in construction engineering and an award-winning academic. He is the Vice-provost and Associate Vice-President (Research/international) and Professor of Engineering at the University of Calgary. Professor Ruwanpura has won international, national, provincial, and municipal awards for his academic accomplishments, research   and innovation. A few recent awards received by him include the Distinguished Alumni Award (Arizona State University), Life Time Achievement Award from Sri Lanka Foundation (Los Angeles) and City of Calgary’s International Achievement.

Dr. Sivakumar Gulasingam is an award-winning physical medicine and rehabilitation physician attached to University Health Network’s Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and an Assistant Professor of the University of Toronto. He is a medical graduate from the University of Colombo. Before migrating to Canada, Dr. Gulasingam had worked as the lead physician at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Sri Lanka. He is a national trainer and para-athletics classifier with Athletics Canada, International Paralympic Committee classifier, international trainer for World Para-Athletics and World Para-Dance Sports. Dr. Gulasingam is a recipient of many prestigious awards including Michael Gordon Award for Humanism in Medicine from University of Toronto and The Most Outstanding Young Persons of the Year – Humanitarian and Voluntary Services, Junior Chambers International (JCI), Sri Lanka (2004).

The Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, Sean Fraser, High Commissioner Navaratne and a cross section of academics, professionals and members of the business community in Canada, attended the event.

Sri Lanka High Commission

Ottawa

22 August, 2022

The country’s debt burden is considered ‘unsustainable’ leading the lender to seek assurances from creditors

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said it will need “adequate assurances” from Sri Lanka’s creditors for a new program as it prepares a visit to Colombo later this month.

The goal of the visit is to make progress on a staff-level agreement for an aid package “in the near term,” to help the island nation weather a severe economic crisis, the IMF said on Friday.

Staff from the global lender will be in Colombo from August 24 to 31, the IMF said.

“Because Sri Lanka’s public debt is assessed as unsustainable, approval by the IMF Executive Board of the Extended Fund Facility program would require adequate assurances by Sri Lanka’s creditors that debt sustainability will be restored,” the IMF said.

The Reuters news agency reported last week that Sri Lanka will ask Japan to invite the Indian Ocean island’s main creditor nations, including China and India, to talks on bilateral debt restructuring.

The loan package being negotiated with the IMF is for between $2bn and $3bn according to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who said he would present an interim budget in September focusing on fiscal consolidation measures agreed with the IMF.

The country of 22 million people is facing its most severe financial crisis since independence from Britain in 1948, resulting from the combined effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic mismanagement.

Sri Lankans have been battling shortages for months amid crippling inflation and a devalued currency, stoking unprecedented mass protests. Thousands of people stormed the colonial-era presidential residence in Colombo, the commercial capital, in early July.

Sri Lanka’s total bilateral debt earlier this year was estimated at $6.2bn as of the end of 2020 by the IMF. It also has $14bn of international sovereign bond debt.

Al Jazeera

The Government of Austria donated an urgently required consignment of essential medicines worth four million Sri Lankan Rupees to the Government of Sri Lanka on 16 August 2022.

The consignment, containing 27 essential medicines, was handed over to the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India Milinda Moragoda by the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Embassy of Austria in New Delhi Matthias Radosztics at the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi. The Austrian Embassy in New Delhi is concurrently accredited to Sri Lanka.

This donation of medicines was in response to the appeal made by the Government of Sri Lanka to foreign countries for medicines urgently required in Sri Lanka. Accepting the consignment, High Commissioner Moragoda expressed his appreciation to the Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Embassy of Austria for this gesture of friendship and goodwill by the Austrian Government. The High Commission will take immediate action to dispatch these medicines to Sri Lanka.

The High Commission of Sri Lanka in New Delhi functions as the main coordinating point between the concurrently accredited 94 Foreign Missions and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s preemptive default declaration has been made by Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe without any cabinet or parliamentary approval which is a pre –requisite for a debt default as Parliament had already voted the necessary funds for debt servicing at the time of approving the Budget 2022, top level official sources said.

As a consequence of Sri Lanka’s debt default there is now an increasing likelihood of forex creditors calling for local debt also to be re-structured, since the major part of the Sri Lankan Government’s debt servicing is that of local debt.

Their contention may be that for “debt sustainability” to be achieved, a local debt re-structuring must also be carried out.

It is possible that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may also agree with such a contention given their past record in responding to debt sustainability situations in other countries, these sources claimed.

The rejecting of domestic debt restructuring after declaring external debt default by the Central Bank Governor Weerasinghe without the prior approval of the Monetary Board, the Attorney General, the Cabinet of Ministers or the Parliament is beyond the control of the monetary authority, several legal experts said.

This situation has arisen mainly from the hasty and reckless decision to default on the sovereign forex debt, and thereby putting Sri Lanka into an almost irretrievable position of despair and hopelessness, they claimed.

Sri Lankans for the past months have been enduring shortages of fuel, food and other essentials and daily power outages. Most of those items are paid for in hard currency, but Sri Lanka is on the brink of bankruptcy, saddled with dwindling foreign reserves and $25 billion in foreign debt. Nearly $7 billion is due this year.

“Sri Lanka has had an unblemished record of external debt service since independence in 1948,” the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.

“However Sri Lanka’s fiscal position that continued normal servicing of external public debt obligations has become a difficult task but not impossible, official sources said.

Central Bank’s sudden declaration of pre-emptive negotiated default of external debt on April 12 this year made at a time where there was an expected forex inflow of over US $ 10.7 billion in the pipeline as at April 4 to boost foreign reserves.

Of the above pipeline, a sum of $ 4.5 billion was confirmed as being in the final stages by April 3 and a further amount of around $2.6 billion was very likely to materialise over the short term, he disclosed.

This forex receipts would have enabled the Government to settle the maturing payments due in 2022, while also rolling over several other existing loans, including Sri Lanka Development Bonds and Foreign Currency Banking Unit (FCBU) loans, he revealed.

This forex receipts would have enabled the Government to settle the maturing payments due in 2022, while also rolling over several other existing loans, including Sri Lanka Development Bonds and Foreign Currency Banking Unit (FCBU) loans, he revealed.

This irresponsible and illegal decision of pre-emptive default plunged Sri Lanka into a serious abyss of economic and financial isolation as a “bankrupt” nation, with the consequential severely damaging repercussions due to haunt the nation for many years to come, several economic experts warned.

Based on that announcement of pre-emptive negotiated default of external debt by the Central Bank, the International Ratings Agencies have also placed Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt rating at a default status, while also downgrading all Sri Lankan banks, further aggravating the situation.

Global ratings agency S and P Global on Monday 15 slashed its rating on Sri Lankan bonds to ‘D’, representing default, following missed interest and principal payments.

The country which had defaulted on a bond payment earlier this year and has $12 billion in overseas debt with private creditors has been battling the worst financial crisis in its 74 year history of independence.

The ratings agency affirmed its ‘SD’ long-term and ‘SD’ short-term foreign currency sovereign ratings on Sri Lanka, as well as reiterated the outlook for the island nation at ‘negative’.

Without taking action to manage forex debt servicing of $244 million in April 2022 using available forex inflows, the Central bank has suspended repayment of $ 789 million for May and June dragging the country into debt default abyss, an eminent economist said.

He stated that when a sovereign forex loan is not repaid, the credibility of the country will be lost, and investors will avoid that country.

It will be very difficult for the defaulting country to obtain new forex loans thereafter. The access to International Bond Markets may be lost for at least 5 to 10 years after the default.

The country’s banking system will be placed under a lot of pressure and face very serious difficulties when opening letters of credit and carrying out forex transactions, he pointed out