China has become Sri Lanka’s prime lender overtaking traditional lenders Japan and the World Bank with Asian Development Bank befalling to second highest lender ‘s position, finance ministry data.
Mainly project loans to Sri Lanka from China were 3.38 billion US dollars by end 2019, against 3.36 billion US dollars for Japan and 3.23 billion US dollar for the World Bank, finance ministry data showed.
China Development Bank Corporation has also loaned Sri Lanka a billion US dollars, in response to a call for market borrowings in 2018, but it was below market rates at the time of 2.56 percent for eight years, mostly as a bailout, analysts say.
China is also giving a budget support loan in 2020 which will also help with debt repayment this year.
In 2019 China disbursed most loans to Sri Lanka, with 648 million US dollars, ahead of Asian Development Bank with 279.5 million US dollars, Japan 187.5 million US dollars and World Bank 177.7 million dollars.
For several years China has topped the annual list of new lenders.
China also committed the most new loans in 2019 with 1,061 million US dollars, followed by ADB with 765 million US dollars, World Bank at 421 million US dollars and ADB 282.2 million US dollars.
China had a total of 2.0 billion US dollars in committed and undisbursed loans, compared to 2.1 billion US dollars by ADB, 1.8 billion US dollars by Japan and 1.28 billion by the World Bank.
In terms of outstanding loans China is now behind Japan which had loaned 4.41 billion US dollars by end 2019.
(LIN)