Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, M. A. Sumanthiran said that there is no other alternative except the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the Sri Lankan Government had to go to in order to revive the country’s economy, given the situation that the country had got into.
MP Sumanthiran said this while participating in a discussion with the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) yesterday morning (12).
Following is the discussion held with MP Sumanthiran:
Q: What do you think of the Government’s efforts to revive the Sri Lankan economy along with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) engagement?
A: Early in 2021 when the economic collapse looked imminent, I convened a meeting of the party leaders in Parliament and after two such meetings we wrote a letter to the government stating that they must go to the IMF. Because in order to revive from the situation the country has got into, we needed an IMF bailout. Without that we would be in the blacklist and wouldn’t have been able to come out of it.
So it became inevitable that we went to the IMF for an economic recovery programme, but however the government’s ability to negotiate terms with the IMF seems to be wanting, in the sense that there are many matters on which we think that better negotiation process could be implemented because even the IMF needs the countries although the countries desperately need the IMF at certain points in time, the IMF also needs the countries to be able to sustain itself.
Therefore, there is a better possibility in negotiating with the IMF for the benefit of the country and in that respect, my view is that the Sri Lankan government has not negotiated properly with the IMF.
Q: Is there any alternative other than IMF engagement to revive Sri Lankan economy or to a bailout package?
A: There is no other alternative except the IMF that we had to go to, given the situation we as a country had got into, so that is a given and there is no other way in which we could have turned the economy around, but while doing that, the negotiation process hasn’t been properly handled in my view on the matter as we could have got much better returns for the IMF prescriptions, even the prescriptions of the IMF could have been better negotiated in a way that did not impact on the poor and the vulnerable in the country.
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