By Jorgelina do Rosario, Karin Strohecker and Uditha Jayasinghe
LONDON/COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka is ready to engage in debt restructuring talks with bilateral and private creditors to recover debt sustainability as “soon as possible,” said the country’s state finance minister Shehan Semasinghe.
Sri Lanka has secured this week a $2.9 billion programme from the International Monetary Fund in a bid to tackle its suffocating debt burden and its worst economic crisis in more than seven decades that has disrupted imports of essentials from fuel to medicine and caused political turmoil.
“The central bank will start engaging officially,” the minister told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday, after the IMF gave its final approval to the bailout allowing much-needed disbursements and unlocking additional financing from multilateral lenders.
“From today onwards, we will move forward to engage more with our creditors and to finalise the restructuring process.”
(Reporting by Jorgelina do Rosario, Karin Strohecker and Uditha Jayasinghe, editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
