Feb 23, 2016 (LBO) – Asian Development Bank said it will scale up lending to Sri Lanka to 2 billion US dollars in loans and equity in 2016 through 2018 compared to the 1.5 billion US dollars in the past three years.
“ADB is re-orienting its operations to meet the evolving needs of Sri Lanka as it moves to become an upper middle income country in the next few years,” Takehiko Nakao, President, Asian Development Bank said at a press conference in Colombo, Tuesday.
“We have decided to increase annual lending in 2016 to 700 million US dollars while ADB lent about 1.5 billion dollars over past three years it hopes to lend about two billion dollars in the next three years.”
However he said that Sri Lanka needs to work on fiscal consolidation and reduce the budget deficit and raise revenue.
“There is a problem with the fiscal deficit and better fiscal management and better debt management is needed,” he said.
“ADB also sees the need for an increase in revenue collection, which is low by international and regional standards.”
He says in addition to infrastructure, human resource development would remain a key focus for the bank.
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