Update, 15 October: The IMF has now answered. Deputy Director for Asia and the Pacific Sonali Jain-Chandra says the Fund will keep supporting Sri Lanka after the programme ends, and has named the forms that support could take — closing three of the four questions this article left open. See Update, 15 October below.

Sri Lanka is in discussions with the International Monetary Fund on a new programme to follow the current Extended Fund Facility, Deputy Finance Minister Anil Jayantha told Parliament on Thursday, EconomyNext reported.

He said the existing facility is on course to finish as planned.

“The current IMF EFF program is on track to conclude successfully in March 2027, marking the completion of its economic reform and recovery efforts under the arrangements.”

On what would follow, he described a change in the nature of the relationship rather than a continuation of the present one.

“In parallel, discussions are currently underway regarding the options beyond the current program, reflecting a shift from crisis-driven support towards a more sustainable, long-term growth-targeted engagement model.”

The statement was made in response to a question raised by the Opposition.

Why a successor programme is a live question

The four-year, US$3 billion Extended Fund Facility was agreed after Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed and the country defaulted on its sovereign debt for the first time in April 2022. Depleted foreign reserves, years of loose fiscal policy, deep tax cuts, the organic farming mandate that damaged agricultural yields and the pandemic left the island unable to service an external debt stock of about US$51 billion.

The facility came with conditions across tax, cost-reflective energy pricing, expenditure control and central bank independence, alongside a sovereign debt restructuring negotiated with bilateral creditors including China, India and Japan.

The significance of Thursday’s statement is therefore less that talks are happening than how the government is framing them. A programme described as “growth-targeted” rather than crisis-driven implies a different set of conditions from the current one — but the Deputy Minister named none of them.

Context in Parliament this week

The statement came in the same sitting week in which the 2027 Appropriation Bill had its First Reading, setting next year’s voted expenditure at Rs. 4,992.77 billion and capping outstanding borrowing at Rs. 3,800 billion. The Budget Speech, the Bill’s Second Reading, falls on 12 November — within the window in which the current facility is still running.

Update, 10 October: a second newsroom, and the Deputy Minister’s full scorecard

A second verified newsroom has now filed on the same statement. The Daily FT reported the identical quote on the shift “from crisis-driven support towards a more sustainable, long-term, growth-targeted engagement model,” placing the remarks in the House “this week.” Its account adds the bulk of the Deputy Minister’s supporting case, which the earlier filing did not carry.

He said the facility had moved the country from crisis to recovery to stabilisation within three years, and built the institutional resilience to absorb further shocks — naming the Middle East conflict and Cyclone Ditwah.

Growth and external accounts. The economy contracted 7.3% in 2022. Real GDP then grew 5% in 2025, a second consecutive year of growth, and 4.7% in the first half of 2026. Per-capita GDP rose to US$5,300 in 2025, and the World Bank upgraded Sri Lanka from lower-middle-income to upper-middle-income status with effect from 1 July 2026. The Bank’s latest Sri Lanka Development Update, which followed 12 consecutive quarters of expansion, raised its 2026 growth projection to 4.4% from 3.6%.

The current account recorded a surplus of 1.6% of GDP in 2025, a third consecutive annual surplus the Deputy Minister described as a structural improvement. Remittances rose to US$8.1 billion in 2025 and reached US$6.1 billion in the first eight months of 2026. Export earnings grew 6.3% to US$13.6 billion, and 2.36 million tourist arrivals brought in US$3.2 billion.

Fiscal and debt. The primary balance swung from a deficit of 3.7% of GDP in 2022 to a record surplus of 5.4% in 2025, standing at Rs. 1.24 trillion as at end-June 2026. Tax revenue nearly doubled, from 7.3% of GDP in 2022 to 15.4% in 2025, and had reached 85% of the annual target by end-September 2026. Central government debt fell from 114.2% of GDP in 2022 to 94.9% in 2025 — already below the programme’s 95% target, which was set for 2032. Headline inflation fell from nearly 70% in September 2022 to 2.1% in December 2025.

On restructuring, he said agreements have been reached with the Official Creditor Committee, the Export-Import Bank of China, the China Development Bank and holders of International Sovereign Bonds. Sovereign spreads narrowed from about 1,900 basis points at the onset of the crisis to around 520 by early 2025.

Reforms listed. The Public Financial Management Act; full rollout of the Integrated Treasury Management Information System; the first Fiscal Strategy and Fiscal Risk Statements in June 2025; formula-based cost-recovery pricing for fuel and electricity; the April 2024 Banking Act amendments; the lifting of the parate execution moratorium in 2025; the Anti-Corruption Act of July 2023 and the Proceeds of Crime Act of 2025; removal of all motor vehicle import restrictions in January 2025; and the Women’s Empowerment Act of July 2024. Private credit grew about 25% year-on-year by end-2025, and commercial lending rates fell from around 29% in 2022 to about 10.6% by end-July 2026.

Social spending targets were met in 2025 for the first time in the programme’s history — 3.4% of GDP on household subsidies and transfers, of which 0.7% went to Aswesuma. Labour force participation rose to 49.4%.

The two gaps he conceded. Poverty is estimated at 16.9% in 2026, which he said remains well above pre-crisis levels. And while investment recovery has shown early signs, foreign direct investment “has yet to fully materialise” — a priority, he said, reflecting structural problems in the investment environment.

Those two admissions are the substance of the update. The scorecard is the government’s own, but the concession on FDI and poverty indicates what a “growth-targeted” successor arrangement would have to address.

Update, 12–13 October: the President speaks, and sets the decision window

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has now addressed the question himself, telling a fireside chat at the Ceylon Chamber’s investment summit on Monday that Sri Lanka is open to a fresh programme but has decided nothing — in either direction.

“We are not in a position where we have completely ruled it out, nor are we saying that we must definitely continue. We remain open-minded,” he said, according to NewsFirst.

This closes one item listed below. When a decision is expected was previously unreported; the President said he would use what remains of the current arrangement to assess the options before determining the future of the engagement, with officials from the Finance Ministry, the Central Bank and a team of economic advisers examining them.

He framed the choice as a test of shock absorption rather than of ideology: “We are assessing how strong our economy is in the face of external shocks and how those risks may evolve. It is based on those forecasts that we will consider any future programme.” Ratings have improved, he said, but reserves have “not yet reached the level we expect.”

The Deputy Minister’s “growth-targeted” framing was repeated at the top: the first programme was built to restore stability, and the next objective is maintaining that stability while achieving growth. The President also said only a very limited number of the government’s policy ambitions had been constrained by the agreement — which is why, he argued, it had run four years “without major conflict.”

Both accounts describe the time left under the facility generously — the Daily FT as “the remaining six months,” NewsFirst as “six to seven months.” From Monday to the stated end date of 19 March 2027 is about five months and one week.

The full set of announcements from that summit, including the port and energy projects opened to private participation, is covered separately in our report on the President’s address.

Not reported: neither filing says what form the successor arrangement might take, whether it would involve new IMF financing or be a non-financing arrangement, or whether the IMF has responded — all three answered on 15 October: see the update below. Neither identifies the Opposition member who asked the question, and neither indicates whether the remaining reviews of the current facility have been scheduled — partly answered: the Seventh Review goes to the Executive Board “in the coming weeks” and one further review mission is to follow before expiry, though no dates are given. The Daily FT does not name the day of the sitting, giving only “this week,” where EconomyNext placed it on Thursday.

Items previously listed here that have been answered: the statement is no longer single-sourced, a decision window is on the record, and the IMF has now set out its own position.

Update, 15 October: the IMF answers, and names four possible forms

The International Monetary Fund has reaffirmed that it will continue supporting Sri Lanka after the current programme ends, NewsFirst reported at 8.28 a.m. on Thursday, under the byline of Zulfick Farzan.

Sonali Jain-Chandra, the Fund’s Deputy Director for the Asia and Pacific Department, said the IMF remains committed to supporting Sri Lanka “in whatever manner the country considers appropriate in the future.”

This is the response this article had recorded as missing. For a week the post-EFF question had been answered only from the Sri Lankan side — by the Deputy Finance Minister in Parliament, then by the President at the Ceylon Chamber summit. The counterparty has now spoken.

The menu, which no previous filing had

The substantive gain is that Jain-Chandra named the options. Any future engagement would depend on the preferences of the Sri Lankan authorities, she said, with the range running from:

That directly answers the two questions listed above. A successor arrangement need not involve IMF money at all — three of the four named options are non-financing — and the choice is explicitly Colombo’s rather than the Fund’s. Discussions would take place “in due course”, and she said the IMF would remain a committed partner regardless of which form the support takes.

Read against the President’s position on 12 October, the two sides are now describing the same open door from opposite jambs: Dissanayake said Sri Lanka had neither ruled a new programme out nor committed to one, and Jain-Chandra says the Fund will take whatever the government chooses. Nobody has yet named a preference.

What remains to be done under the current programme

Jain-Chandra put the programme’s conclusion in March next year, consistent with the March 2027 date recorded above.

Before then, two things must happen. The staff-level agreement on the Seventh Review, reached in early October, is expected to go to the IMF Executive Board in the coming weeks — the step that releases the tranche. And a further review mission will take place before the programme expires, making it essential, she said, that Sri Lanka maintain its focus on macroeconomic stability and continue its reforms.

That partly closes the question of whether the remaining reviews are scheduled. There is at least one more mission; no date is given for it or for the Board meeting.

Her scorecard, against the government’s own

Jain-Chandra’s account of the gains tracks the Deputy Minister’s closely. She said the macroeconomic situation has improved substantially since the height of the crisis, that fiscal performance has been particularly strong with government revenue having doubled during the reform period, that debt restructuring is now largely complete, and that structural reforms including governance measures — a central component of the programme — have been implemented.

Two points of comparison are worth drawing out.

On revenue, the two accounts agree in substance. The Deputy Minister put tax revenue at 7.3 per cent of GDP in 2022 rising to 15.4 per cent in 2025, which he described as “nearly doubled”; measured that way it is slightly more than a doubling. Jain-Chandra says simply that government revenue doubled. The measures are not identical — tax revenue as a share of GDP is not the same as government revenue — but neither figure contradicts the other.

On growth, they do not agree. Jain-Chandra said Sri Lanka has recorded positive growth for 11 consecutive quarters. The figure recorded above, from the Deputy Minister’s account of the World Bank’s latest Sri Lanka Development Update, is 12 consecutive quarters.

The gap is one quarter, and this desk cannot resolve it from the reporting. The likeliest explanations are a different starting quarter for the count or a different latest quarter included in it; both institutions are describing the same recovery. It is worth noting precisely where each number comes from: the 12 is the Deputy Finance Minister’s characterisation of a World Bank report, not a World Bank quotation this desk has read, while the 11 is the IMF’s own figure stated directly. Readers encountering either should not treat them as independent confirmations of each other.

What this does not settle

NewsFirst does not say where or when Jain-Chandra was speaking, or in what setting — a press briefing, an interview or a mission statement — and does not report any Sri Lankan response to her remarks. (The setting was answered later the same day: see the update below.)

It gives no date for the Executive Board meeting or the further review mission, does not say what the Seventh Review tranche is worth — now supplied by the Daily Mirror, below — and does not indicate whether the Fund has a view on which of the four options it considers appropriate. It carries nothing on the two weaknesses the Deputy Minister conceded in his own scorecard — poverty at 16.9 per cent and foreign direct investment that “has yet to fully materialise” — which remain the clearest statement of what a growth-targeted successor arrangement would have to address.

Update, 15 October (second filing): she was speaking in Bangkok, and the tranche has a number

A second verified newsroom has now filed on Jain-Chandra’s remarks, and it supplies the two things the morning account was missing. The Daily Mirror reported at 12.25 p.m. on Thursday that she was speaking at a press conference during the IMF meetings in Bangkok.

That locates the remarks precisely. The IMF–World Bank annual meetings are running in Bangkok from 12 to 18 October, and a Sri Lankan delegation led by the Treasury Secretary is attending. Her statement was made at a scheduled press conference inside that event, not issued as a mission statement or given as an interview — which answers the question recorded above.

The tranche now has a figure. The Daily Mirror puts the financing unlocked by the Seventh Review at about US$345 million, and describes it as access to special drawing rights of equivalent value once the review is completed. That matches this desk’s own reporting of the staff-level agreement on 5 October, which recorded SDR 254 million — about US$345 million. The two accounts are independent and they agree.

On the sequence, the Daily Mirror tracks NewsFirst: the agreement goes to the IMF board “in the coming weeks”, followed by a further review mission before the programme expires in March. Her assessment is also the same — the macroeconomic situation “much improved”, fiscal performance very strong, debt restructuring largely complete, and improvements on structural issues including governance.

One difference in how the menu is described

The two filings do not render the options identically. NewsFirst sets out four parallel items — a new financing arrangement, policy advice, surveillance support and capacity development. The Daily Mirror compresses them into two: continued engagement “including support through a new financial arrangement and policy advice in the form of surveillance or capacity development.”

Read the second way, surveillance and capacity development are forms of policy advice rather than separate options, which yields a menu of two headings rather than four. Neither account is quoting her at length, and the difference is most likely one of paraphrase. The substantive point survives both readings and is unchanged: a successor arrangement need not involve IMF money, and the choice is Colombo’s.

Still unreported after both filings: no date for the Executive Board meeting or the further review mission, no Sri Lankan response to her remarks, and no indication whether the Fund favours any of the options. Neither filing carries anything on the poverty and FDI weaknesses noted above.