ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka is in talk with Qatar for a central bank swaps of over a billion US dollars, to boost the island’s flagging reserves, State Minister of Finance Shehan Samarasinghe said.
“We are working with the central bank of Qatar to have swap facilities of over a billion US dollars with our central bank,” Semasinghe told parliament.
He said a 400 million US dollar swap under India’s SAARC facility was also under discussion with India. Sri Lanka had also requested another billion US dollar swap from India.
Following the visit of Minister Basil Rajapaksa a 500 million US dollar facility to buy oil from India is also in the works, he said.
It is not clear how many of the facilities will come from India and when. A statement following Minister Rajapaksa said a timeline would be jointly decided.
Reports said at least 14 tanks will be given to Lanka IOC under plan to develop the tank farms as a joint venture with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation.
Sri Lanka’s forex reserves which were hit by naked Keynesian stimulus up to around September 2021 is now being depleted by sterilized interventions to maintain a 6.0 percent policy rate. (Colombo/Dec08/2021)
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