SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva yesterday questioned whether Sri Lanka has technically defaulted on its debt repayments, as the intended creditor has been accused of not receiving multiple payments.
The MP, making serious concerns over the alleged disappearance of US$ 2.5 million in public funds, said that the entire country needs to know whether the creditor has not been paid or whether the debt has technically been defaulted.
“I have requested several times that the COPF be informed about this.After that, the committee members can discuss via email and decide what to do next, depending on the response of the relevant borrower. But there is no response from either the Finance Ministry or Central Bank to our request.According to the Constitution, the full power over money handling belongs to Parliament, not to the Finance Ministry and its secretary.
Therefore, after we raised a question, we also expected a responsible response, but that didn’t happen.
“This comes as the Ministry of Finance has failed to appear before the COPF for three consecutive meetings: on gaming regulation, Quarter 4 2025 fiscal performance and the critical discussion on fiscal-monetary policy coordination. In over 15 years in Parliament, I have never seen this level of contempt for parliamentary oversight,” he said.
This is not just negligence. This is a failure we warned about. When debt operations were moved from the Central Bank to the Treasury’s PDMO, the COPF repeatedly urged the Treasury to hire competent, experienced staff. Managing a sovereign nation’s debt in global financial markets is not a clerical task. Those warnings were ignored.”
“This morning, we wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury. Parliament is constitutionally responsible for public finance. We have yet to receive a response on how or when this happened, and why the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank have been silent all this time.
“This is not a political issue. Regardless of where we stand, we must come together to address this, hold those responsible accountable, and rebuild the trust our country has worked so hard to restore. The people of Sri Lanka deserve nothing less but accountability on public finance,”he added.
(Except for the headline, this story, originally published by dailynews.lk has not been edited by SLM staff)
