Can Sri Lanka trade its way back to prosperity? Published 6 hours ago

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Newsnight

 

Sri Lanka is, in the words of its own president, "bankrupt".

The Indian Ocean nation defaulted on its sovereign debt in May 2022, plunging the country into economic and political chaos.

The Colombo government secured a $2.9bn (£2.4bn) International Monetary Fund bailout in principle the following September.

But the cash will not be released to Sri Lanka until its sovereign creditors in China and India first agree to a restructuring of the billions of dollars of bilateral debt they are owed.

Despite optimism over the past month that such an agreement was imminent, a deal has still not materialised - and Sri Lanka's economic agony, and the suffering of its population, continues.

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Yet, even if the bailout cash does start to flow in the coming weeks or months, that will not mark the end of Sri Lanka's economic rebuilding programme, but merely the beginning.