As Sri Lanka reels from Cyclone Ditwah’s devastation, calls to revisit the continuing Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) programme, which critics say imposes punishing austerity, are rising louder.
At the least 638 individuals died — 191 stay lacking — and tens of millions have been affected by torrential rains, unprecedented flooding, and a number of landslides that battered Sri Lanka late November. The local weather catastrophe, one of many worst the nation has witnessed, has dealt a pointy blow to the nation’s tentative restoration, three years after it declared chapter amid a monetary meltdown.
Information in Frames | An island ravaged by a cyclone
Final week, Opposition Chief Sajith Premadasa urged the Anura Kumara Dissanayake authorities to renegotiate the IMF deal within the wake of the local weather disaster, calling for speedy talks with the Fund to droop or amend circumstances that worsen the individuals’s hardships.
A UNDP research in 2022-23 discovered that the crushing financial disaster in 2022 had left over half of the island’s inhabitants “multidimensionally weak”. Though Sri Lanka has since achieved relative fiscal stability, the situation of the nation’s poor — hit hardest by IMF-prescribed spending cuts — has worsened amid stagnant wages, excessive dwelling prices, and a visibly strained public training and well being system they depend on.
Within the wake of the current pure catastrophe, over 70 civil society teams and activists throughout Sri Lanka have known as for the renegotiation of the IMF deal, debt, and local weather justice. “Whereas a majority of individuals are reeling underneath austerity measures, together with regressive tax hikes, subsidy cuts, and insufficient social safety measures, the Authorities of Sri Lanka has grow to be a prisoner of the continuing Prolonged Fund Facility programme of the IMF,” stated their assertion, issued on December 8, 2025.
“The IMF controlling authorities spending not solely restricts the flexibility of the federal government to answer the continuing humanitarian disaster, however severely impedes funding in infrastructure, recuperating livelihoods, and adapting to additional local weather change impacts,” they contended, demanding an “pressing revision” of Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring settlement, a “huge” debt discount, a halt on subsidy removals, and a direct standstill on present and future debt servicing for the nation’s restoration.
Additionally learn: As cyclone impression unfolds, Sri Lanka braces for daunting restoration
In 2026, the federal government should service debt totalling over $2 billion, whereas it tries to raise the nation out of the deluge, whose full impression is but to be ascertained. Some improvement consultants have noticed that restoration would possibly show tougher than after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
Recognising the problem, President Dissanayake advised Newsweek journal in an interview revealed on December 8, 2025: “Preliminary estimates point out that the harm might be past any pure catastrophe that our island has endured. So we should service debt whereas concurrently rebuilding from local weather disasters. Because of this debt sustainability frameworks for climate-vulnerable nations should change.”
Weighing in on Sri Lanka’s predicament, former President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed lately famous that the local weather calamity makes it “unimaginable” for Sri Lanka to remain aligned with the IMF programme. “When Sri Lanka confronted its monetary disaster in 2022, the IMF accepted a four-year Prolonged Fund Facility after months of negotiation. But the Debt Sustainability Evaluation (DSA) didn’t account for local weather shocks,” he stated in a submit on X, because the cyclone’s impression started unfolding.
Not simply Sri Lanka, however a number of climate-vulnerable, debt-distressed nations are in an analogous plight. The Local weather Susceptible Discussion board — a world alliance of over 70 extremely climate-vulnerable nations — has lengthy known as for reforming the DSA to correctly worth resilience investments and pure capital, and for a reformed G-20 Widespread Framework that features automated debt standstills in response to local weather shocks, stated Mr. Nasheed, who can also be the Secretary-Basic of the Discussion board.
Nevertheless, there are not any indicators but that the Sri Lankan authorities might veer away from the IMF programme. In reality, the federal government has sought a $200 million Speedy Financing Instrument from the Fund. An IMF spokesperson confirmed that Sri Lanka’s request for emergency financing will take priority over the scheduled fifth evaluate of the continuing Prolonged Fund Facility (EFF), which might be deferred to early subsequent 12 months.
In the meantime, activists have demanded that the federal government urgently prioritise equitable reduction, specializing in economically and socially marginalised communities most affected by the catastrophe. “The very best [number of] casualties have been reported from Badulla, Kandy, Kegalle, Matale, and Nuwara Eliya districts — areas particularly liable to landslides and residential to already marginalised and weak working-class tea plantation employees,” the Feminist Collective for Financial Justice, a community of feminist activists throughout Sri Lanka, stated in a press release. Demanding common social safety schemes that may “effectively and meaningfully present a cushion,” the Collective known as for pressing negotiations with the IMF and different collectors “to cancel debt reimbursement and reverse austerity insurance policies on this disaster context”.
Revealed – December 09, 2025 11:53 pm IST
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