Sri Lanka says it will stop servicing its foreign debt

SRI LANKA has suffered multiple crises and nearly three decades of civil war since it won independence from Britain in 1948. But it had never failed to pay back its debts. That changed on April 12th, when the South Asian island nation’s finance ministry said in a statement that it would suspend payments on all foreign debt until it had come to an agreement with creditors on how to restructure the loans. The document stressed the country’s unblemished record of meeting its obligations. But continuing to do so, it said, “is no longer a tenable policy”. Recent developments, including the economic fallout from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, meant paying up had become “impossible”.