Financial Times

Talks with bilateral donors on budget - Amunugama
Finance Ministry Dr Sarath Amunugama said his recent visit to Japan marks a policy shift under which the government is now discussing medium term budgetary programmes with bilateral donors as opposed to doing so previously only with multilateral lenders like the IMF and World Bank.

"Up to now Japan has been providing assistance in terms of project aid," he told The Sunday Times FT in an interview. "This time, we were able, by mutual consent, to upgrade our talks from purely project proposals to a broad general understanding about the budgetary framework we envisage for the future."

In the past, Sri Lankan governments had discussed their economic plans only with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. "We have shifted that to emphasise our consultations with major bilateral donors like Japan, India, China, Germany, the US and the EU," Amunugama said.

"This means that we will be discussing our three-year budgetary prospects with these countries bilaterally and securing long-range commitments." Amunugama also said the government was going ahead with the third player in the petroleum sector although he declined to comment on whether a deal had been struck with India's Bharat Petroleum.

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