IMF Approves $2.5 Billion Loan to Sri Lanka, Ambassador Says
The International Monetary Fund, which has mounted rescues from Iceland to Ukraine in the past year, approved a loan of about $2.5 billion to Sri Lanka, the country’s ambassador to the U.S. said in an interview.
The IMF earlier this week said it reached a staff-level agreement for a stand-by loan to help the island nation rebuild its economy after the end of a 26-year civil war and replenish its international reserves. The Washington-based lender’s executive board was scheduled to vote on the deal today.
“This money is mainly for reserves and balance-of- payments,” Jaliya Wickramasuriya, the country’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview in Washington today. “No one has opposed it” before the IMF’s executive board, he said.
IMF spokesman William Murray had no immediate comment on the loan.
Sri Lanka’s reserves more than halved in the six months that began in September to as little as $1 online payday loans.4 billion as the global recession hurt export earnings, prompting it to start talks with the IMF in March.
The IMF has said Sri Lanka’s government has undertaken a program aimed at rebuilding reserves, reducing the fiscal deficit, strengthening the financial sector and reconstructing areas damaged by the conflict.
Sri Lanka’s central bank this month raised its 2009 growth forecast for Sri Lanka to as much as 4.5 percent from an earlier estimate of 2.5 percent after the government in May defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group.
Sri Lanka aims to cut its budget deficit to 7 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, from 7.7 percent last year, central bank Governor Nivard Cabraal said in a July 21 interview.
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