Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has fully endorsed the appeal by international economists urging substantial debt relief for Sri Lanka in the wake of Cyclone Ditwah.
“I hope President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his administration have the courage, wisdom, and capability to achieve these objectives,” Premadasa said in a post on ‘X’.
His remarks come after a group of 120 leading global economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, inequality expert Thomas Piketty, and development scholar Jayati Ghosh, called for the immediate suspension of Sri Lanka’s external debt payments.
They stressed that the country, already burdened by repayments amounting to 25% of government revenues, cannot sustain its obligations while confronting the devastation of the cyclone, which killed more than 600 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.
The economists warned that the environmental emergency has consumed the limited fiscal space created by last year’s debt restructuring and urged fresh negotiations to restore sustainability.
“Sri Lanka is now confronting a severe economic shock triggered by the recent cyclone, extensive flooding and landslides, which have inflicted extensive damage to infrastructure, livelihoods, and key sectors of the economy,” they said, calling for the “immediate suspension of Sri Lanka’s external sovereign debt payments. (Newswire)