15 December 2021 06:02 pm
While asserting that Sri Lanka is confronting its worst ever financial crisis, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Patali Champika Ranawaka said Sri Lanka needs to settle US$ 947 million loans next month, once the Central Bank would be left with nothing in the foreign exchange reserves for importing food, fuel and pharmaceuticals.
Making his remarks at a press conference, he said Sri Lanka had to settle US $ 500 million of International Sovereign Bonds, US$ 247 million of International Development Bonds and US$ 200 million in terms of bilateral and multilateral loans.
“It means we are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for the first time since Independence,” he said.
He said the government built expressways, the Lotus Tower and the airports using borrowings during the 2005/2015 period, and the burden of such unyielding projects had fallen on people.
Mr. Ranawaka said people would experience a situation where there is no gas, no milk powder and no kerosene oil for the first time in the country's history. (Yohan Perera)