Cash-strapped Sri Lanka urgently seeks $6bn to keep economy afloat

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka urgently seeks $6bn to keep economy afloat

COLOMBO: Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Tuesday asked the International Monetary Fund to arrange a creditor meeting for $6 billion in loans to help keep the country afloat during its unprecedented economic crisis. Months of daily blackouts, long queues for petrol and record inflation have made daily life a misery in the South Asian island nation of 22 million people.

The government has already defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt, and a critical shortage of foreign currency has left traders unable to import adequate supplies of food, fuel and other essential goods. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the country needed $5 billion for its daily needs in the next six months, along with another billion to stabilize Sri Lanka’s rapidly depreciating rupee. “We call on the International Monetary Fund to hold a conference to help unite our lending partners,” the premier told parliament.

He said a meeting under IMF auspices with China, Japan and India-Sri Lanka’s three biggest bilateral lenders-would be a “great strength” in helping source more loans. Sri Lanka is already in talks with the IMF for a bailout and has appointed international experts to help restructure its debt, about half of which is in international sovereign bonds. Wickremesinghe again warned the