Lanka to attract over USD 13 Bn foreign receipts in 2023

Sri Lanka is expected to attract over USD 13 billion foreign receipts this year, governor central bank Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe said yesterday.

He said that the main contributing factor towards this would be foreign remittances by Sri Lankan workers overseas which are expected to touch over USD 10 billion this year. “Sri Lanka is currently getting around USD 500 million a month as foreign remittances.”

The Governor said that with the tourism sector opening up Sri Lanka also expected to attract around USD 2.3 billion foreign receipts from tourism. Export and other earnings too would pass the USD one billion mark.

“All these would help the country to attract over USD 13 billion this year.”

The Governor also said that they also expect to increase the foreign reserves from the current USD 3.8 billion to around USD 10 billion in the future. He also said that with the debt restructuring process initiated with the IMF guidance and subsequent discussions with creditors Sri Lanka now would have to pay around USD 4 billion annually for debt resurrecting. “This was around USD 8 billion per year earlier.”

He also said that the IMF granted the first tranche of USD 330 even before Sri Lanka commenced the restructuring process.

“The country has commenced the resurrecting process and in some areas has achieved the targets while there are also some gray areas. But I don’t think this would be a negative factor towards releasing the second tranche when the IMF comes in September as Sri Lanka has nearly fulfilled key obligations on the IMF agenda.”

He said that Sri Lanka has already started repaying some debt to bilateral donors and releasing USD 50 million to Bangladesh was also done. He also said that the CBSL will issue a fresh circular today for banks to reduce the interest rates by minimum 3%.

“We have observed that some banks have already done this but there is a disparity among banks lending rates.”

He also said that pawn lending interest should be 18% and credit card interest should be at 28%. These rates would only currently apply to banking institutions. It was also observed that the Non Performing loans which increased from around 11.3 % to 13.5 % are slowly coming down again.

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