India, Japan and France have announced to set up a common platform for talks between creditors for the debt restructuring program of Sri Lanka, which is facing a difficult economic crisis. Representatives of the three lender countries, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, attended a press conference on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington on Thursday. “The objective of the event is to demonstrate multilateral cooperation regarding the debt restructuring process among creditors to Sri Lanka,” said an official statement. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has assured support to Sri Lanka in dealing with the current economic crisis. He emphasized that there must be co-operation among lenders to ensure transparency and equity in debt restructuring discussions. Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe joined the conference through ‘online’ mode. Japan’s Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki described the launch of this common platform as historic. He said that this committee is for all creditors and expressed hope that Sri Lanka’s biggest creditor China would also join this initiative of Japan. Sitharaman and Suzuki were joined by Emmanuel Mouline, Director General (Treasury) in the French Department of Finance, at the press conference. Wickremesinghe’s office said India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called for coordination among creditors, which is vital to make Sri Lanka’s debt sustainable again. Read also: China’s Defense Minister will reach Russia, will meet his Russian counterpart in Moscow China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, when asked a question about Sri Lanka’s creditors launching formal talks at a high-level meeting in Washington, said, “China calls for all commercial and multilateral creditors to participate in Sri Lanka’s restructuring.” Join and share the debt burden fairly. We support China’s financial institutions to find a solution for the sake of Sri Lanka. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′; n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0); s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’, ‘ fbq(‘init’, ‘550264998751686’); fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);