Foreign investors sold Sri Lanka rupee government bonds for a third consecutive week, offloading a net Rs 6,075 million in the week ended 5 November — and this time they did it while the rupee was edging up rather than falling.

The outflow was reported by EconomyNext from Central Bank data. The Central Bank’s own Weekly Economic Indicators release for 6 November records the same movement from the other direction: the rupee value of Treasury bills and bonds held by foreign investors fell about 3.2 per cent during the reporting week.

The numbers

The running total reconciles exactly against this desk’s own record. EconomyNext put the 2026 inflow at Rs 49.7 billion when the second week of selling was reported on 31 October; Rs 49.7 billion less this week’s Rs 6.075 billion gives Rs 43.6 billion, the figure now reported. The four-week outflow of Rs 22.4 billion plus this week’s selling likewise gives the Rs 28.5 billion now on the record, and the selling-week count has moved from four of twenty to five of twenty-one. The print is consistent with the series rather than an isolated number.

A correction to one figure

EconomyNext renders the week’s selling as “Rs. 6,075 million (US$218.4 million)”. That conversion cannot be right: at the prevailing rate of roughly Rs 330 to the dollar, Rs 6,075 million is about US$18.4 million. The outlet’s own recent filings bear this out — it converted Rs 2,818 million to US$8.5 million and Rs 8,605 million to US$26.1 million on the same basis. The dollar figure appears to be US$18.4 million with a digit prefixed. This desk reports the rupee figure, which is the one the Central Bank publishes.

What changed this week

The first two weeks of selling came with the rupee under pressure, and EconomyNext attributed them to exactly that. This week breaks the pattern: the selling happened despite a slight appreciation in the currency.

Analysts quoted by EconomyNext pointed instead to events abroad — the US mid-term election result, which was read as reimposing checks on the president’s powers, hopes of an end to hostilities with Iran, and the Israeli prime minister’s failure to secure a majority. On that reading the week’s outflow is a repositioning out of frontier-market debt rather than a verdict on the rupee.

The currency itself has fallen 6.7 per cent so far this year through 6 November, a figure the Central Bank’s release independently confirms. That is marginally better than the 6.8 per cent recorded through 30 October — the arithmetic behind the “slight appreciation.”

Context

Foreign participation in rupee bonds had been one of the clearer markers of recovered confidence. The 2026 inflow peaked near Rs 58.3 billion in mid-October before three weeks of selling pulled it back to Rs 43.6 billion, now tracking at about 61 per cent of last year’s full-year figure with under two months left to run.

The rupee had been steady for more than three years before depreciating sharply in May, which the Central Bank attributed to higher oil and vehicle import bills. It stabilised after a 100 basis point policy rate rise that month, and inflation has ticked up over the past seven months following fuel price increases — including a further round in late October.

Not reported

Neither source gives the total stock of foreign holdings of rupee bonds, so the Rs 43.6 billion inflow cannot be set against the size of the market. Neither identifies which investors sold, which maturities were sold, or whether the proceeds left the country or were redeployed. EconomyNext’s opening paragraph and the Central Bank’s reporting week do not cover identical periods — the release covers 2 to 6 November, while the outflow is reported for the week ended 5 November.