Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), met today with Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera and Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy. 

Following the meeting, Ms. Lagarde made the following statement:

“I was pleased to meet with Minister Samaraweera and Governor Coomaraswamy this afternoon. We discussed the challenging economic environment and the policy priorities for the country. The authorities stressed Sri Lanka’s continued commitment to their economic reform agenda under the IMF-supported program. 

“We agreed that a strong policy mix, with effective implementation of that agenda, is key to strengthening confidence, while putting Sri Lanka on a sustainable, high-quality growth path that would benefit its people. 

“The IMF remains ready to support the Sri Lankan authorities in these endeavors and an IMF team is scheduled to visit Colombo in mid-February to resume program discussions.” 

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) and the Insurance Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (IRCSL) on 31 December 2018 at CBSL, to conduct effective consolidated risk-based supervision and for CBSL to be the lead supervisor in this regard.

Consolidated supervision is an essential tool for supervising financial groups. It involves assessment of group-wide risks that may emanate from relationships among members of a corporate group operating across different financial sub-sectors. Group-wide consolidated supervision of such institutions is necessary in order to evaluate and assess contagion and reputation risks posed by such entities to the financial system and to contain systemic risk.