Sri Lanka will wrap up talks with international bondholders on restructuring $12.5 billion in debt within a few weeks, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in Singapore on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, Minister Sabry said that Sri Lanka will also seek to balance its ties with key creditors India and China to ensure that there is no difference in dealing with the two.
“Hopefully within a couple of weeks,” Sabry said when asked when the nation’s bond restructuring efforts with creditors will be finished.
“Towards the end of this month, officially, we are done and dusted with the restructuring process, then of course, in line with that, we need to start payment,” he said.
Sri Lanka secured a provisional agreement with some of its bondholders to move forward on restructuring its international bonds last week but now needs the other private creditors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to also agree.
The country, which has $37 billion in external debt in total, clinched an agreement with its official creditors including Japan, China and India in late June to restructure $10 billion in debt.
In total, the debt rework is estimated to save Sri Lanka $8 billion in write-offs and delay capital repayments by at least four years.
Sri Lanka will use this opportunity to restart about a dozen stalled, foreign-funded development projects and promote economic growth, Minister Sabry said. (Newswire)