Group of 120 experts including Joseph Stiglitz urge fresh debt restructuring plan given scale of destruction
A group of the world’s top economists – including the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz – have called for Sri Lanka’s debt payments to be suspended as it tackles the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
More than 600 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed across the island, in what Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, called the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.
The country’s $9bn (£6.8bn) national debt was restructured last year, after lengthy negotiations with creditors after the government defaulted on repayments in 2022. But development campaigners warned at the time that the burden on Sri Lankan taxpayers remained unsustainable.
Before the cyclone hit, annual repayments were expected to total 25% of government revenues – a high level by international and historical standards.
