Taiwan’s financial exposure to Sri Lanka, which declared bankruptcy earlier this month, was NT$3 billion (US$100.28 million) as of the end of last month, with most of it in the banking and the asset-management sectors, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said in a meeting on Thursday, the Taipei Times reported. Ten local banks had loans totaling NT$350 million — NT$290 million to Sri Lankan companies and NT$60 million to the nation’s financial institutions — as of the end of last month, down 44.6 percent from a year earlier, a commission tally showed.
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Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan lawmakers on Wednesday elected an unpopular prime minister as their new president, a choice that risked reigniting turmoil in the South Asian nation reeling from economic collapse and months of round-the-clock protests, the Associated Press reported. The crisis has already forced out one leader, and a few hundred protesters quickly gathered after the vote to express their outrage that Ranil Wickremesinghe — a six-time prime minister whom they see as part of the problematic political establishment — would stay in power.
A day after Sri Lanka’s president fled, Mohamed Ishad waited outside an immigration office near the capital, clutching a file of documents that he hopes will get his passport renewed so he can leave, too, the Associated Press reported. With the nation in the throes of its worst economic crisis, Ishad has no job, relies on relatives for financial help and sells vegetables to feed his wife and three children. He wants to go to Japan and find work there so he can send money back home.
Sri Lanka's parliament will reconvene on July 15 and a new president will be elected on July 20, the parliamentary speaker said on Monday, as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa plans to resign on Wednesday amid a devastating economic crisis, Reuters reported. "Nominations for the next president will be presented to parliament on 19 July. On 20 July parliament will vote to elect a new president," Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said in a statement.
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Sri Lanka's central bank governor signaled on Monday he would stay in the job but warned that prolonged political instability in the country may delay progress on negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package, Reuters reported. Governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe, who has been holding bailout talks with the IMF since taking office in April, had told reporters in May he could resign if there was no political stability in the island nation of 22 million that is facing its worst economic crisis in seven decades.
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Sri Lanka raised interest rates to the highest level in two decades on Thursday, saying it had to head off runaway inflation to avoid even deeper pain for an economy that is already in crisis and is shrinking, Reuters reported. The Sri Lankan central bank increased its standing lending facility rate by 100 basis points to 15.50% while the standing deposit facility rate was similarly raised to 14.50%, the highest since August, 2001. Inflation touched a year-on-year record of 54.6% in June, and central bank Governor P.
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Sri Lanka’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout are more complex and difficult than before because it is a bankrupt nation, the country’s prime minister said on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told lawmakers that recent discussions with a visiting IMF mission were fruitful but not as straightforward as in the past. The South Asian island nation is in its worst economic crisis in memory.
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Sri Lanka’s economy fell back into contraction last quarter as the country battled its worst economic problems since independence, with emergency aid to stabilize the island nation proving elusive, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product declined 1.6% in the quarter ended March from a year earlier, the Department of Census and Statistics said in a statement on Tuesday. That’s shallower than a 3.6% contraction seen by economists in a Bloomberg survey and compares with a revised 2% expansion in the previous quarter.
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Sri Lanka abruptly restricted fuel supplies and told residents to stay home, raising the risk of more unrest as the government struggles to provide essential goods due to a crippling sovereign debt crisis that has rocked the country for months, Bloomberg News reported. The island nation’s cabinet of ministers Monday decided to limit distribution of fuel to essential services until July 10, spokesman Bandula Gunawardena said in a televised statement, adding that inter provincial public transport would likely come to a halt.
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