(Reuters) – Sri Lanka has requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for rapid financial assistance and the worldwide lender may take into account it after preliminary reluctance, an aide to the nation’s finance minister mentioned on Tuesday.
Protests have erupted within the island nation because it battles a devastating financial disaster introduced by the consequences of COVID-19, mismanaged authorities funds and rising costs of gas which have sapped international reserves.
A delegation headed by Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Ali Sabry kicked off formal talks with the IMF in Washington on Monday for a programme the federal government hopes will assist prime up its reserves and entice bridge financing to pay for important imports of gas, meals and medicines.
“The (international minister) made a request for a Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to mitigate the present provide chain points, but initially IMF of the view that it doesn’t meet their standards,” Sabry’s aide Shamir Zavahir mentioned on Twitter.
“However, India subsequently made representations on an RFI for (Sri Lanka) as properly and IMF might take into account this request as a result of distinctive circumstances.”
Sri Lanka is in search of $3 billion within the coming months from a number of sources together with the IMF, the World Bank and India to stave off the disaster, Sabry informed Reuters earlier this month.
Last week, the nation’s central financial institution mentioned it was suspending reimbursement on a few of its international debt pending a restructure.
In the business capital Colombo, protests demanding the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa have dragged on for greater than every week.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma and Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
