The United National Party on Sunday posed eight questions to the government over what it described as a lack of discipline and transparency in public debt management, claiming the country was being “undermined internationally” because of policy confusion.
UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena, briefing reporters at the party’s Flower Road head office, said mismanagement of state finances without an adequate understanding of fiscal processes had discredited Sri Lanka globally and deepened distrust. He pointed to the Public Debt Management Act No. 33 of 2024, which he said was passed to strengthen safeguards and ensure structured oversight of borrowing and repayment, including through a Public Debt Coordinating Committee of senior Treasury and Central Bank officials.
The Act envisaged multi-tier scrutiny of state payments, with transactions reviewed by senior officials, the minister, the Cabinet and Parliament, Abeywardena said. He recalled that during the 2022 economic crisis then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe, while serving as Finance Minister, continued debt servicing and informed Cabinet and Parliament of repayments to countries including Bangladesh in order to demonstrate Sri Lanka’s repayment credibility.
The party demanded immediate clarification on whether recent foreign debt repayments had complied with the provisions of the Act and whether such transactions had been properly disclosed on the Finance Ministry and related institutional websites, as required under law. Further questions sought details of the banking channels used for Australian funds — names of banks, account numbers, destination institutions, payment dates and frequency — and asked whether Parliament and the public had been informed.
The UNP also questioned the Central Bank’s role in the process, particularly in relation to procedures scheduled to take effect from January 1, 2026, and asked whether any interim actions had been taken under legal authority. Abeywardena questioned whether the alleged failure to publicly disclose Australian debt repayments amounted to a violation of the Act.
The eight-question package is the third opposition accountability track active over the Treasury, alongside the Free Lawyers’ organisation’s 22 questions to the President on the US$2.5 million cyber-fraud and Faiszer Musthapha’s call for a Presidential Special Investigation Committee, though the UNP frame focuses specifically on debt management rather than the cyber heist.
