Sri Lanka to wrap up debt restructuring talks soon

Sri Lanka will wrap up talks with international bondholders on its restructuring process in a few weeks, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said, a major step for the island nation to emerge from its worst financial crisis in decades.

He said Sri Lanka will also seek to balance its ties with giant neighbor India and China to ensure that there is no difference in dealing with the two, as the rival Asian giants are key creditors and investors but are also jostling for geopolitical influence in the small Indian Ocean country.

“Hopefully within a couple of weeks,” Sabry said in an interview at the Reuters NEXT conference in Singapore when asked when the nation’s bond restructuring efforts with creditors will be finished.

“Towards the end of this month, officially, we are done and dusted with the restructuring process, then of course, in line with that, we need to start payment,” he said.

Sri Lanka secured a provisional agreement with some of its bondholders last week to move forward with restructuring about $12.5 billion of international bonds, but now, the rest of the private creditors and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) need to agree.