IMF agreement Will get Parliament’s approval to implement although not required by law: President

• We will liberalise further and attract more investment as we cannot go on with economic stagnation

President Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday said that he would get the approval and assistance of Parliament to implement the IMF agreement although it is not required by law.   

Speaking to Editors of media organizations, Wickremesinghe said that the IMF agreement was a restructuring of the economy and not only of the country’s debt, and that the future of Sri Lanka rests with whether the country will implement this agreement or not.   

“We will liberalise further and attract more investment as we cannot go on with economic stagnation which resulted in unemployment that caused trouble in 1971, 1983 and 1989,,” he said.  

He also said that the future of Sri Lanka rests with whether we will implement this agreement or not.  
“We are going to bring the toughest anti-corruption law in South Asia,” the President said.  

Meanwhile, Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe said that interest rates will come down with the IMF arrangement coming into effect and inflation getting reduced.
President Wickremesinghe said , “ This  is the first occasion we’ve had to restructure our debt with the support of IMF and our creditors. This is only the beginning. Once we’ve got the support, the financial assurances, it means that we are no longer considered a bankrupt state. We have to go to the next stage, which is to negotiate with all our creditors with the multilateral creditors, with the bilateral creditors and the most difficult of all, the private creditors.Now that stage only once we concluded it that we will be in a position to go ahead without having to look back and with confidence. So this is not the end. 

This is, in a sense, only the beginning. Next is the negotiations with the creditors. And just as much as you are negotiating the creditors, we also have a four year programme,” He said when the MCC was presented they alleged that the country was to be divided. 

“When the IMF was introduced, they said we were going to be dominated by the West. So it is difficult for us to do all this. That is why the media organizations were asked to join in making the 17th International Monetary Fund programme a success,” he said.