Sri Lanka owes over $15 billion in foreign loans

Sri Lanka has repayments of over $15 billion to make to foreign lenders for loans taken out in the last 15 years, according to a document submitted to parliament on Thursday.

Lenders include China, to whom Sri Lanka will have to repay $4.9 billion for loans worth $2.96 billion, and the Asian Development Bank who will be repaid $4.64 billion after Sri Lanka borrowed $3.35 billion.

The average repayment period for the Chinese loans is 12.2 years, while the ADB loan average repayment period is 21 years.

See the report from Reuters here.

See our earlier post: Who benefits from Chinese loans to Sri Lanka? (21 November 2010)

Other lenders to Sri Lanka include the United States, the European Union, India, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).

The report comes as Sri Lanka sold a $1 billion, 10-year sovereign bond on Tuesday, in order to bolster the country’s reserves and defend the weakening rupee, marking the fifth such sale of bonds since 2007.

Also see our earlier post: Sri Lanka is amongst world's heaviest borrowers - Moody's (20 November 2010)

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