All foreign currency debt dues for 2020 settled - Prime Minister

Colombo (News 1st);  Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa told Parliament on Thursday (12), the government settled all the foreign currency debt dues for the year 2020.

"We were able to maintain this unblemished record of ours, only because we took immediate action to reduce unwanted foreign borrowings and made substantial effort to manage imports at an acceptable level, as we had a clear understanding that the debt phobia is being propagated simply as a strategy to justify the sale of assets of the country and the neoliberal policies of the last government," the Prime Minister told Parliament.

The low growth rates recorded in the last 5 years, being the lowest in the region cannot be justified at all, he said adding it is not a secret that the neo-liberal economic policies which supported trading of imports, resulted in the crippling of the rural economy, on which 40 percent of the total population is directly or indirectly reliant.

The Prime Minister said this after presenting the Appropriation Bill (2020) to Parliament on Thursday (12).

For the Full Statement in English: Budget Speech - 2020 - English