Sri Lanka’s central government debt stood at approximately US$98.96 billion at the end of March 2026, falling from end-2025 levels, Deputy Finance Minister Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando told Parliament on Friday in a statement rebutting what he described as misleading economic data in public circulation, NewsFirst reported.
Including the debts of provincial councils, local government bodies and state-owned enterprises, total public debt amounted to about US$102.2 billion, the minister said. “Compared to the end of 2025, this is a reduction,” Fernando told the House, adding that the figures had to be read in dollar terms rather than rupees for proper international comparison. “Whether viewed in rupees or dollars, we have successfully managed our debt.”
Fernando said the country had moved significantly toward the IMF debt-sustainability benchmark of bringing public debt to 95 percent of GDP by 2032 — an anchor target under the existing Extended Fund Facility programme. “We were tasked with reaching a debt sustainability level of 95 percent of GDP by 2032. However, we have been able to approach this target much earlier, by the end of 2025 itself,” he said.
He also pointed to a milestone reduction in the budget deficit, attributing it to the absence of fresh borrowing. “Since we have not taken on new debt, even with measures such as the supplementary estimate, we were able to reduce the budget deficit in 2025 to its lowest level since 1957, which stands at 2.3 percent of GDP,” Fernando said.
The Deputy Minister explicitly rejected social-media claims that the government’s first-quarter budget deficit had reached Rs. 606 billion, calling them “completely incorrect” and warning that misinformation undermined informed policy debate. “There is a tendency to present incorrect information instead of engaging with official data and sound policy. There is little legal or ethical accountability for such claims, and many of them turn out to be false,” he said.
The $98.96 billion central government figure matches the Public Debt Management Office’s March 2026 Statistical Debt Bulletin released earlier this month, which placed total external debt at $37.5 billion within that envelope. The 2.3 percent of GDP deficit floor also aligns with the Central Bank’s Snapshot of the Sri Lankan Economy 2025, which had earlier reported the same figure alongside 5 percent real GDP growth. Friday’s parliamentary statement formally upgrades that read by saying the 95 percent debt-to-GDP target has effectively been reached six years ahead of the IMF timeline, although the ministry has not yet released the underlying year-end debt-to-GDP ratio behind that claim.
Fernando also pushed back on a rupee-denominated alternative figure. “When debt is obtained in dollars, the liability remains in dollars. When debt is obtained in rupees, it remains in rupees,” he said, telling the House that a rupee depreciation only inflates the local-currency value of foreign borrowings without creating new dollar obligations. “That does not mean the dollar debt has increased. The additional amount reflected in rupees is an exchange rate loss, not new debt,” he said, calling sustainability a function of whether the government can service debt out of revenue. Opposition MP Ravi Karunanayake intervened during the speech to flag that data submitted to the Committee on Public Finance had placed total debt at Rs. 34 trillion, asking why parliamentary and committee figures differed, Newswire reported.
