It was revealed that Sri Lanka’s foreign commercial borrowing started with the issuance of Sri Lanka Development Bonds in the year 2001, through which it obtained a loan of 1,720 million dollars and since 2007, during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, another commercial loan of 1,760 million dollars was obtained by issuing international sovereign bonds.
This information is revealed in the annual report issued by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka for the year 2022. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who came to power in 2015, had said that international support should be obtained to investigate the information about Sri Lanka’s foreign loans. He then accused that a huge amount of debt had been hidden.
According to the information related to foreign commercial loans presented by the Central Bank, it has been revealed that commercial loans of 3,480 million dollars have been obtained only through the two forms of development bonds of 1,720 million dollars since 2001 and international sovereign bonds of 1,760 million dollars since 2007.
Professor Premachandra Athukorala has pointed out that, at present, President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s loan from the International Monetary Fund has been set at an interest rate of more than 5%. It has now been confirmed that these interest rates may increase further, and financial institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which provide loans to Sri Lanka, are setting high-interest rates according to the high rates the IMF has set.
