[ad_1]
ECONOMYNEXT – United States International Development Finance Corporation is looking to fund more companies and banks in Sri Lanka after building up a billion US dollar portfolio during a time when the economy was in trouble, Chief Executive Scott Nathan said.
“We have taken our level of financing in the last four years, during a period of clear macro-economic difficulty …. from 20 million to a billion,” Nathan told reporters in Colombo after announcing a 553 million US dollar loan to a container terminal.
“We have a pipeline of additional investments.”
“We are still cranking through more deals and we are optimistic that we will have more deals in the future.
“Despite other institutions pushing pause and waiting to see what happens with the economy here, we are open for business, we want to find more partners, across all sectors.”
The container terminal is built by Sri Lanka-based John Keells Holdings and India’ Adani Ports. The terminal loans was “an investment in the dynamics of the global economy, shipping and transshipment,” Nathan said.
DFC had the biggest exposure to Sri Lanka in the Indo-Pacific region after India. The Indo-Pacific was a “high priority for the United States” and was viewed as the “engine of economic growth for the world.”
The DFC had a portfolio of 9 billion US dollars in the Indo-Pacific.
“It used to be the smallest region for DFC. And now it is nearing the same level as our exposure in the Western Hemisphere and in Africa,” Nathan said.
“I think because of the fundamentals of the economy here. I think because of the priority that the US places with the nations in the Indo-Pacific, that trajectory is going to continue and get significantly more investment in the years to come.”
The DFC in the current visit signed a 35 million dollar credit to Citizen’s Development Business to on-lend to women and small businesses, including for solar energy and electric bikes.
Nathan met Sri Lanka’s commercial and development bank bosses during his visit and discussed “opportunities to scale DFC’s portfolio across strategic sectors,” according to a twitter.com message.
READ MORE:
Sri Lanka’s DFCC gets US$150mn from US development lender
US’ DFC lends USD120 mln for crisis-hit Sri Lanka’s SME sector
The DFC was interested in financing renewable energy, health care and agriculture.
Funding private sector projects would help the government avoid debt.
Sri Lanka has borrowed from China for projects and from commercial lenders after running into several currency crises after the end of a 30-year war while attempting to boost growth by printing money (targeting potential output).
Sri Lanka defaulted in April 2022 after the most extreme deployment of macro-economic policy adding tax cuts to money printing, to close what state economists said was a ‘persistent output gap’. (Colombo/Nov08/2023)
[ad_2]
Source link
