Paris Club says aims to start Sri Lanka debt negotiations

PARIS (Reuters) – The Paris Club of creditor governments aims to start negotiations to restructure Sri Lanka’s debt, the group said on Friday after a creditor committee was set up this week.

The Paris Club said the Japanese and Indian finance ministers along with its president and representatives of Sri Lanka set up a creditor committee on Thursday on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington.

Creditor committees lead talks about the terms for a future debt relief deal.

“The Paris Club intends to keep the momentum and start the restructuring negotiations in coordination with all relevant stakeholders, to ensure fair burden sharing, transparency and comparability of treatment,” it said in a statement.

It added that all public sector creditors were welcome to participate in the process.

Sri Lanka last month secured a $2.9 billion IMF programme to tackle its suffocating debt burden and its worst economic crisis in more than seven decades.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by GV De Clercq and Christina Fincher)