Senior Minister Sarath Amunugama said the next instalment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) standby facility of US$2.6 billion is expected in the first quarter of next year and an IMF team will visit Sri Lanka for talks soon.

“Our foreign reserves are at a satisfactory level with more than US$7 billion and investor confidence in Sri Lanka is growing rapidly,” he said.

The minister said the government was able to reduce the recurrent expenditure to a manageable level and the gap between revenue and expenditure had been brought down to Rs.1.8 billion. (SAJ)