Sri Lanka eyes US $ 1.3bn from multilateral funding agencies this year

Sri Lanka is expecting to obtain around US $ 1.36 billion funds from major multilateral agencies, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), this year.  

“For the first year, you are going to get probably two tranches of the IMF programme, which is likely to be about US $ 660-670 million. The World Bank in the first year set provisions for US $ 600 million under three categories—direct budgetary support, social safety net and support for the financial system. The ADB will provide funding for social security and social safety net. There could be about close to US $ 1.3 billion,” former Central Bank Governor and senior economist Dr. Indrajith Coomaraswamy revealed. 

Over the four-year period under the IMF programme, the country would have access up to US $ 7 billion in overall funding from the three agencies.

With the reverse graduation of Sri Lanka to a low-income country, Dr. Coomaraswamy noted that a fair share of US $ 600 million of the World Bank funding would come under concessionary terms (IDA terms).

In addition, he hinted that the country could see funds from China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as well.