SL Fin Min says economy resilient will withstand negative impacts from terror attacks

Apr 25, 2019 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's Finance Minister says that the islands strong economic fundamentals will be able to support resilience to withstand the economic impact. "We had laid a sound foundation for the economy to withstand shocks of the nature that we faced on Sunday," Mangala Samaraweera, Minister of Finance said addressing parliament. "Nonetheless, there will be an impact on the tourism sector even though it is now off-season." He said the the islands tourist industry has had long experience of protecting our visitors even through a 30-year war, and there is no doubt the sector will bounce back. "We have taken significant measures to support tourism through policy interventions in the budget, and also outside of the budget such as the visa waiver. We will discuss with the industry to identify further measures to support them through this challenging period,". "We could also see some stresses in FDI and portfolio investment in the short term." In both instances, he urges investors to focus on the macroeconomic fundamentals which are very sound. Sri Lanka’s investment proposition remains very compelling. "We have taken pro-active measures to refinance external debt in the first quarter of this year, and have already completed large external debt repayments in January and April."