A Cabinet-appointed committee chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning will report on whether Sri Lanka should enter another International Monetary Fund programme once the current one ends, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Parliament while presenting the 2027 Budget on Thursday.
The Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreed with the IMF is scheduled to conclude in March 2027.
“We hope to successfully complete the 17th IMF program. While the program to stabilize the economy domestically is proceeding successfully, at a time when we are preparing for economic transformation toward growth, it is difficult to predict the impacts caused by global and natural disasters,” the President said, according to EconomyNext.
“We believe our reserves must be further strengthened to successfully face such situations. Therefore, after concluding the current IMF program, the Cabinet of Ministers has appointed a committee chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning to examine the suitability of entering another program and what kind of program to pursue, and to submit a report.”
The committee also includes the Governor of the Central Bank, the Secretary to the Ministry of Finance and economic experts, and is to examine “whether we should pursue a program after March, and if so, what kind of program it should be.”
The decision has a foreign-policy side
Sri Lanka’s choice will also test its ability to manage competition between major powers, former Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Aryasinha argued in the Gamani Corea Memorial Lecture, delivered in Colombo on 4 November and reported by the Daily Mirror on Thursday.
Aryasinha said the IMF programme had brought competing powers together during the economic crisis, temporarily easing pressure on Colombo to take sides — but that the room for manoeuvre was narrowing as March 2027 approached. He said he sensed jockeying for position had already begun, and warned against aligning too closely with any one power.
He added that an easing of diplomatic tensions had not delivered the wider market access or investor interest Sri Lanka expected, and that the country had made limited progress in diversifying what it exports and where it sells.
Sourcing note
These are two separate events reported on the same day: the committee announcement comes from Thursday’s budget speech, while the Aryasinha remarks were made at a lecture eight days earlier and filed by the Daily Mirror on Thursday. They are presented together because both bear on the same March 2027 decision, not because one corroborates the other.
Not reported
Neither filing names the Deputy Minister of Finance chairing the committee, gives a deadline for its report, or says whether a successor programme would be a precautionary facility or a full financing arrangement.