Sri Lanka settles US $1,338mn to multilateral lenders up to Feb 2024
May 03, Colombo (LNW): The government is continuing negotiations with bilateral and multilateral lenders including World Bank and Asian Development Bank along with donor countries to secure financing support for development projects, a finance ministry report revealed. Relevant agreements will be signed for foreign financing this year following the IMF Executive Board review to confirm that multilateral partners are continuing their financing contributions to Sri Lanka,
In line with the interim policy adopted by the Government, the servicing of the external debt of affected loans obtained from bilateral and commercial creditors has been temporarily suspended for an interim period commencing from 12th April, 2022.
However the government is continuing the servicing of the debt of multilateral agencies like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank.
The government will have to repay the accumulated foreign debt service payment amounting US$ $4.38 billion this year and settle $ 1billion International Sovereign Bond which will mature in March 2024, finance ministry data shows.
Accordingly principal repayment for foreign loans was at $2.07 billion and interest $540 million to multilateral financial agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank
The government has already repaid $1.91 billion since February 2022 till February 2024 under the present administration, according to computation of quarterly debt reports of the finance ministry.
The total debt repayments of multilateral agencies during the period of July 2022 to February 2024 was amounting to $ 1.34 billion. It has also repaid bilateral loan installments of $571 million during this period.
Sri Lanka has repaid 1,338.8 million US dollars to multilateral lenders since President Ranil Wickremesinghe took office on July 21, 2022, his media office reported. .
A sum of 760.1 million dollars was repaid to the World Bank, 489.9 million to the Asian Development Bank and 22.3 million dollars to the European Investment Bank.
Another 22.9 million was repaid to the OPEC Fund for Development, 17.9 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 9.8 million to the IMF, 7 million to the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank and 1.7 million to the Nordic Development Fund.
