Sri Lanka welcomes IMF bailout

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Source: AFP

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka welcomed Tuesday a tentative agreement with the IMF for a 2.5-billion-dollar bailout as the country emerged from a near four-decade-long separatist war.

Sri Lanka's Central Bank chief Nivard Cabraal said the International Monetary Fund's announcement Monday of the preliminary agreement on the loan would send a much-needed positive signal to investors.

"For the government and private sector, the confidence-building is complete (with the IMF loan)," Cabraal said.

The IMF assistance comes after Sri Lanka crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels -- who had been fighting since 1972 to carve out a separate state for minority Tamils -- in May. The war had claimed up to 100,000 lives.

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Disaster capitalism at its finest. Anybody who thinks that war is over is wrong.

[Idealism]

1. The IMF needs to be dissolved

Every country they have intervened in has had horrible side effects from their coniditionality requirements. They have done more harm than good with their loans, usually cutting services that the poor depend on, leading to all types of nasty consequences like preventable diseases and deaths associated with them skyrocketing.

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2. Rights body slams IMF loan to Sri Lanka

COLOMBO — Human rights campaigners on Thursday described a 2.5 billion dollar loan to Sri Lanka by the International Monetary Fund as "a reward for bad behavior".

Human Rights Watch said the IMF should have set conditions on the loan, including demands that the Sri Lankan government help re-settle nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians being held in tightly guarded camps.

"The IMF needs to change its approach," Brad Adams, Asia director of HRW, said. "The IMF board of governors should make the release of each new tranche of funds contingent on tangible human rights progress."

"To approve a loan, especially 600 million dollars more than Colombo even asked for, while they have hundreds of thousands of people penned up in these camps is a reward for bad behaviour."

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