Colombo: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the timing of its Executive Board meeting to approve Sri Lanka’s next tranche of funding, under the Extended Fund Facility, would depend on the government’s ability to deliver on key reform commitments, including the electricity tariff adjustments.
“Completion of the review is subject to approval by the Executive Board and we expect that the board meeting to take place in the coming weeks,” IMF Spokesperson Julie Kozack said during a regular press briefing in Washington on Thursday.
Kozack was responding to a question on whether there had been a delay in the review and if it was linked to Sri Lanka’s commitment to revise electricity tariffs. She acknowledged the dependencies and pointed to two critical conditions that must be met before the review can move forward.
“The first is implementation of prior actions and the main prior actions are relating to restoring electricity, cost recovery pricing and ensuring proper function of the automatic electricity price adjustment mechanism.
And the second contingency is completion of the Financing Assurances Review, which will focus on confirming multilateral partners, committed financing contributions to Sri Lanka and whether adequate progress has been made in debt restructuring,” she explained.
Sri Lanka and the IMF staff reached a staff-level agreement on the fourth review of the programme on April 25. Once the review is approved by the IMF Executive Board, Sri Lanka will have access to about US $ 344 million in financing.
