NewsGate Press Network

Finance Minister of Sri Lanka was on-call to the prime minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday the 16th of March 2022 at his Parliament House office some in the afternoon.

Modi conveyed to Basil Rajapaksa that India will continue to stand with the friendly people of Sri Lanka.

Rajapaksa is in New Delhi to seek a $1 billion line of credit (LoC) for his island country that is battling a financial crunch.

Sri Lanka is facing an increasing risk of sovereign debt default as it has to pay over $4 billion dollars for foreign loans in 2022 where as it only had $2.31 billion US dollars in its reserves by end February.

It may be recalled that India has agreed to provide $1.9 billion US dollars including 1 billion for imports of essential commodities, 500 million US dollars for fuel import and another 400 million US dollars as a swap.

The one billion US dollar credit line is expected to be signed during Rajapaksa’s visit, which was postponed twice.