COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will need about US$3 billion in external assistance in the next six months to help restore supplies of essential items including fuel and medicine, its finance minister told Reuters on Saturday .
"The entire effort is not to go for a hard default," Sabry said."We understand the consequences of a hard default." On Sunday thousands of protesters gathered near the president's seafront office in Colombo, making it one of the biggest shows of public outrage in recent days. "Once we go to them, first thing is there is a sense of confidence in the entire international monetary community that we are serious," he said."We are transparent, we are willing to engage."On Friday, a new central bank governor raised interest rates by an unprecedented 700 basis points in a bid to tame rocketing inflation and stabilise the economy.
"These are very unpopular measures, but these are things we need to do for the country to come out of this," Sabry said."The choice is do you do that or do you go down the drain permanently?"Sri Lanka will seek another US$500 million credit line from India for fuel, which would suffice for about five weeks, Sabry said.
I'm sure this forthcoming dollar assistance will include at least 10% of foreign assets alleged to have invested by certain patriotic SriLankan politicians in off-shore heavens including Australia welikalaa chaturaalwis Sesiri KernerPathum anuradisanayake SirasaTVlk
But how are we going to pay all these debts? But Minister Johnston Fernando gets all the money required to build roads. So as the Defence Ministry budget? WHY, WHY, WHY? What is this madness? GoHomeGota RajapaksasGoHome
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