Samagi Jana Balawegaya MP Sujeewa Senasinghe has told Parliament that the International Monetary Fund behaves “like a loan shark,” while conceding that Sri Lanka had little alternative but to borrow from it.
“The IMF is like a loan shark. But sometimes you need a loan shark. When a country is unable to survive, you have to borrow from whoever is available and try to rebuild the economy,” he said, according to NewsFirst.
His argument was that the Fund is useful in an emergency but cannot serve as a long-term economic strategy.
What he alleged
Senasinghe claimed the Fund’s priority is recovering money rather than developing the countries it lends to.
“The IMF does not worry about whether a country develops or not. Its focus is on collecting taxes, imposing property taxes, inheritance taxes and ensuring debts are repaid by squeezing people as much as possible,” he said.
He also said assurances had previously been given that Sri Lanka would reassess its engagement with the Fund, and that no meaningful review had followed.
On the domestic effect, he named farmers, business owners and ordinary households: “The farmer is suffering. The businessman is suffering. Ordinary people are suffering. People cannot even afford to buy fuel.”
“My concern is that Sri Lanka is heading towards a major abyss. People are finding it increasingly difficult to live, and the situation is not improving,” he said.
These are an opposition MP’s characterisations of the Fund’s conduct and of the government’s record. NewsFirst’s report carries no government response and no IMF comment.
The day he chose
NewsFirst says only that Senasinghe was “speaking in Parliament” and does not identify the debate. The Order Paper for this week puts Wednesday’s business as a resolution under the Public Debt Management Act and a supplementary estimate, debated and put to a vote between 11.30 a.m. and 5 p.m. The report was filed at noon, inside that window, but the connection is not stated in it.
Where the programme actually stands
The remarks land three weeks after the IMF and Sri Lanka reached staff-level agreement on the seventh review of the Extended Fund Facility, and after the government opened talks on a possible successor arrangement once the EFF ends in 2027. Cabinet this week also approved a credit risk assessment methodology for public debt under the same Act now before the chamber.
So the “reassessment” Senasinghe says never happened is, on the government’s account, a live negotiation about what replaces the programme rather than a review of the current one. Neither framing is tested in the report.
Single-sourced
This desk could not find the speech reported by any other verified newsroom at the time of writing. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing carried no matching item, Hiru News had not filed, and no Ada Derana report surfaced on a search. Parliament’s own news page for 21 October covers the Speaker’s announcements on Supreme Court petitions and not the debate. The account above therefore rests on one outlet.
