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Basil says Attygalle told him not to go to IMF

09 Jun 2022

By Imesh Ranasinghe  Former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that former Treasury Secretary S.R. Attygalle told him not to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and that he had written a letter to the IMF last July seeking assistance.  Speaking yesterday (9) to the media, he said that there were opposing views about seeking IMF assistance among the two groups who take decisions related to the economy in the Treasury and the Central Bank.  “Some had said that we should immediately take a loan under an IMF programme, some had said we shouldn’t,” he added.  Further, he said, the two groups failed to justify their opinion to him when he requested their ways of rebuilding the economy, with or without an IMF programme.  Moreover, he said that he had presented the views of these two groups to Cabinet periodically, and there had been discussions within Cabinet about whether or not the IMF should be approached. “Some were in favour, some were not in favour (of going to the IMF), but the President decided that we should have discussions with the IMF; based on that, I sent a letter to the IMF last July,” he added. As a result of this, Rajapaksa claimed, two top IMF representatives met with the President and himself. The IMF delegation comprised its Asia Pacific Department Director Dr. Changyong Rhee, Deputy Director Dr. Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf, and IMF Resident Representative for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Dr. Tubagus Feridhanusetyawan, who met the President in March 2022.  In April, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said that he believed Sri Lanka should have gone for an IMF programme much earlier.  However, Basil Rajapaksa stated yesterday: “We went to the IMF according to the due process.”  Adding that the President did not mean that Sri Lanka should have gone for an IMF programme earlier, he claimed: “What he meant was that the IMF should have provided us with assistance much earlier.”  Further, the former Finance Minister said that when he met Indian Finance Minister  Nirmala Sitharaman and Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar during his visit to India, they had asked him whether Sri Lanka would enter into an IMF programme. “At that time, I had the Treasury Secretary on my left and Sri Lankan High Commissioner for India Milinda Moragoda on my right. I said to them that the person on the left told me not to go (to the IMF), but the person on the right said to go,” he said.  Moreover, he said that it was due to the loans he was able to obtain through discussions with other countries that Sri Lanka is currently able to bring in fuel, milk powder, and fertiliser, adding that there were no foreign reserves in the Central Bank when he took office as Finance Minister.

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