No urgency for IMF loan - CB Governor

Hiran H. Senewiratne

Central Bank (CB) Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal said the Government has no absolute urgency on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stand by facility or loan which runs into US $ 1.9 billion.

“All technical evaluations and assessments on this loan have been completed and the report on this matter is with the IMF management, which will be presented in due course. But the Government has no anxiety or a time table to base our major development activities/plans purely on this facility,” Cabraal told the Daily News.

“Therefore, it is rather difficult for us to say when we would get the loan, which amounts to US$ 1.9 billion but the Treasury has sufficient foreign reserves for the next few months,” he said.

Cabraal said the country has enough foreign reserves and this month alone they were able to add US $218 million to the reserve. “With the dawn of the peace and the normalcy we are anticipating more foreign investments and funds into the country in the coming months,” he said. The Governor also said that forex was coming in much more than before after the defeat of the LTTE and the CB was pumping in dollars into the money market to stabilize the US currency against the rupee which was trading at Rs. 115 per dollar compared to Rs. 118/120, a few weeks back.

He said the CB had injected US dollars periodically to stabilize the dollar against a stronger rupee, to ensure exporters don’t suffer and more money coming in through a re-surging stock-market, remittances and export proceeds.