The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is moving to make sure that Sri Lanka repays its debts even if its people die of hunger, charged Supreme Lanka Council leader Wimal Weerawansa.
At the behest of its US, UK, German and other masters, the IMF is laying down conditions for endless taxes, higher interest rates, to make the Central Bank independent while ruining local banks, the MP said at the House debate on March 23 on the IMF bailout loan that Sri Lanka has secured.
These masters of the IMF account for 36 per cent of Sri Lanka’s total foreign borrowings through international sovereign bonds, but claim as much as 76 pc of the combined loan interest repayments, according to Weerawansa.
After seeing hilarious scenes of lighting firecrackers and government MPs thanking the president for securing the IMF loan, the second stage will see the restructuring of foreign and local debts.
That will cause massive harm to the country’s financial and banking systems, as in the case of Greece, he said.
Weerawansa quoted from Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, well-known writer Naomi Klein, economist Milton Friedman and ex-chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz to support his allegations against the IMF.
The IMF’s attempts to lure Sri Lanka further into a debt trap, while forcing it to sell profit-earning state enterprises and retaining the burden of the loss-making ones, is a crime that should not be allowed, he added.
