Sri Lanka’s People need a New Debt Deal C. P. Chandrasekhar, Martín Guzmán, Jayati Ghosh and Charles Abugre

Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, must reject his predecessor’s recent debt-restructuring deal with the IMF. That agreement would inflict unnecessary pain on Sri Lanka’s population and set a dangerous precedent, undermining other developing economies’ ability to restructure their foreign debts.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka’s president, recently lost his re-election bid after voters overwhelmingly rejected the debt-restructuring deals he negotiated with the International Monetary Fund and other creditors. Instead, Sri Lankans elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the left-wing National People’s Power (NPP) alliance and a vocal critic of IMF-imposed austerity measures, who has vowed to renegotiate the country’s agreement with the Fund………….

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(This article was originally published by Project Syndicate on September 30, 2024)