Colombo, Oct 4 (PTI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday met former Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe and thanked him for his efforts in advancing bilateral ties in the last two years.
Jaishankar, who is here on a day-long visit, is the first foreign dignitary to visit Sri Lanka since the National People’s Power (NPP) government led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power on September 23.
Wickremesinghe is a leader of the island nation’s United National Party (UNP) but had fought the September 21 presidential elections as an independent and lost to Dissanayake.
“Glad to see former President @RW_SRILANKA today,” Jaishankar said in a post on X.
“Thanked him for his efforts in advancing our ties in the last two years. Assured him that India will continue to commit to Sri Lanka’s economic recovery and development,” Jaishankar added.
In mid-April 2022, the island nation declared its first-ever sovereign default since gaining independence from Britain in 1948, prompting the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign after months-long street protests due to precarious economic conditions.
In July 2022, Wickremesinghe took over for the balance term, undertook some of the major reforms in the power and energy sector to bring the country’s economy on track.
India had then pitched in with about USD 4 billion in assistance to enable the island nation to recover from a deep economic crisis after it announced the default on over USD 51 billion foreign loans.
Sri Lanka is currently negotiating the fourth tranche of a USD 2.9 billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The IMF, which had made external debt restructuring conditional, released the third tranche of the bailout package in mid-June as the Washington-headquartered global lender said on August 2 that Sri Lanka’s economic reform programme had yielded good results.
The new dispensation on Thursday said the NPP government would stay committed to the USD 2.9 billion four-year facility clinched by the Wickremesinghe administration in March 2023. PTI NPK NPK NPK
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