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Tshering22

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Buying cost items right now is the last thing Lanka should be doing. SUVs for police is not an urgent priority for a country that has <$5 billion in its reserves. They recently paid off Iran in terms of tea for their oil dues.

Any ideas how much rare earths does Sri Lanka have? That could be a game changer.
 

Aditya Ballal

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Buying cost items right now is the last thing Lanka should be doing. SUVs for police is not an urgent priority for a country that has <$5 billion in its reserves. They recently paid off Iran in terms of tea for their oil dues.

Any ideas how much rare earths does Sri Lanka have? That could be a game changer.
Money is from a Line Of Credit we had given them, which can only be used for defence products Made in India
 

Tshering22

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Sri Lanka is a lost cause now like Pakistan. I wonder how much of our bailouts would help them come out. They have taken China's side completely due to the Rajapaksas. They won't be able to sustain this geopolitical ping-pong match for long.

We should refrain from giving more dole outs as they would still continue working with the Chinese loans.

Sri Lanka says no to IMF, seeks new China loan

Sri Lanka ruled out an IMF bailout on Wednesday and said it plans to seek another loan from China to address an economic crisis that has led to food and fuel shortages. The island’s tourism-dependent economy has been battered by the pandemic, with supermarkets rationing goods and rolling blackouts imposed by power utilities unable to fund oil imports.

International rating agencies have warned of a looming sovereign default on Sri Lanka’s $35 billion foreign debt as the treasury battles a crunch on foreign exchange reserves and a gaping budget deficit.
But central bank governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal rejected mounting calls from local and international economists to seek an International Monetary Fund bailout and debt restructure.

“The IMF is not a magic wand,” he told a news conference in Colombo. “At this point, the other alternatives are better than going to the IMF.”

Cabraal added that talks with China over a new loan were at an “advanced stage”, and a fresh agreement would service existing debt to Beijing. “They would assist us in making the repayments… the new loan coming from China is in order to cushion our debt repayments to China itself,” he said. Beijing is already the island’s biggest bilateral lender, accounting for at least 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s external debt.

Cabraal’s remarks come days after a visit from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi who discussed a debt payment restructure with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka has borrowed heavily from China for infrastructure in the past, some of which ended up as white elephants. Unable to repay a $1.4 billion loan for a port construction in the south, Sri Lanka was forced to lease out the facility to a Chinese company for 99 years in 2017.

The United States and India have warned that the Hambantota port, located along vital east-west international shipping routes, could give China a military toehold in the Indian Ocean. Cabraal did not give an indication of the size of the loan sought from China, but said talks were also underway with India for a $1 billion credit line to fund a broad range of imports.

He also said Colombo will repay a $500 million sovereign bond that matures next Tuesday despite local business leaders publicly asking him to withhold the repayment and seek IMF help.
 

sorcerer

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Sri Lanka postpones school exams as the country ran out of paper and has no foreign exchange to import


sri lanka can ask china for loans at a very higherester interest rate for buying paper and ask India for things at reasonable rate
 

HeinzGud

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Nice.. What Pakistan is for China ( Basketcase) .. Sri Lanka will be for India..
Cant understand how a country so much ahead of India w.r.t HDI indicators.. as well as GDP per capita, is consistently under financial duress.
Well the ailment runs back to the days of the Raj. Sri Lankan polity spent every dime in its coffer to produce free stuff to people garnering their vote in the end. By doing they have effectively bankrupted the entire country with in 75 years.

If anyone wants to know what socialism can do to a country, they should look at Sri Lanka.
 

Rubaroo

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sri lanka can ask china for loans at a very higherester interest rate for buying paper and ask India for things at reasonable rate
Sri Lanka in talks with China for $2.5 billion credit support, Chinese official says
 

ezsasa

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Tourists must have started to come back now, hopefully SL economy recovery should start soon enough.

all that talk about GDP per capita being more than India meant nothing in crisis, there are limits to which GDP and per capita numbers can used for comparison.
 

Butter Chicken

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Quite a feat to go bankrupt despite having no insurgencies right now, no real military(except for infantry) and no wars to fight

Wonder if this crisis can be used to make Sri Lanka a protectorate like Bhutan
 

THESIS THORON

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situation still worsening

english print edition newspaper suspended due to shortage of papers and ink

POWER CUTS- 10HRS LONG

 

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