President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in a televised statement yesterday (18), warned that Sri Lanka wouldn’t be able to obtain assistance of the IMF, or any other lending agencies, or countries, if tough new tax regime was not implemented.
The President said: “If we withdraw from this programme, we will not receive assistance from the IMF. If we don’t get the IMF certification, we will not get the support of those international institutions, such as the World Bank, and Asian Development Bank, and the countries that provide support. If that happens, we will have to go back to the era of queues.
“We may have to face even tougher times ahead. We have to obtain these loans and go for the debt-restructuring programme. We are not doing these wilfully. We have to take certain decisions, even reluctantly.
“However, we will reconsider these decisions periodically.”
The following is the full text of the President’s statement: “An important step in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring program took place last week. A team under our Minister of State for Finance participated in the annual (October 07) meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Accordingly, a meeting was held under the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, with the countries that had given loans to Sri Lanka and some private institutions that had also given loans.
Over 75 persons participated directly or through zoom technology. The primary purpose of this was to come to a common…
