As Geeta Gopinath and Krish Srinivasan arrive for rescue plan talks in Colombo, Sri Lankans ask: Where was the IMF when the loot was happening under their noses?
(Lanka-e-News -11.June.2025, 11.00 PM) When IMF Deputy Managing Director Geeta Gopinath and Asia-Pacific Director Krishnamurthy Srinivasan land in Colombo this week, one might expect polite welcomes, tight-lipped photo ops, and jargon-laden press statements about “macroeconomic stability” and “structural reforms.” But in truth, they are walking into a hornet’s nest of public fury and parliamentary embarrassment.
Sri Lanka’s political and civil society circles are buzzing not about what the IMF is about to do — but about what it shamefully failed to notice while stationed inside the very nerve centre of Sri Lankan economic governance: the Ministry of Finance.
From 2022 to 2024, IMF technical teams camped within the Ministry’s colonial-era walls, ostensibly to guide the country through the greatest economic collapse in its post-independence history. But now, thanks to whistleblowers, parliamentary committee probes, and the dogged pursuit of the truth by a newly energized NPP government, a cascade of shocking revelations has emerged.
Most notably: President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government spent Rs. 1.8 billion on what was euphemistically billed as a "youth event" — a festival of speeches, LED stages, drone cameras, and decorative bananas. The event produced no tangible output, save for glossy videos and well-fed event managers. The smell of corruption was not just in the air — it was being served with cocktails.
And yet, throughout all this, IMF officials — those trusted macroeconomic nannies meant to ensure tight fiscal discipline — remained stoically mute.
Back in April 2022, Sri Lanka entered formal negotiations with the International Monetary Fund following a historic default — a default that left the country unable to pay for fuel, medicine, or basic food imports. As part of the rescue package, an IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of $2.9 billion was agreed upon, and the Fund embedded a “technical team” inside the Ministry of Finance.
Their mission? Monitor public expenditure. Guide fiscal policy. Help the government avoid, as the IMF once put it, “unsustainable populist spending.”
And yet here we are.
The former president, notorious for his elitist nonchalance and economic improvisation, greenlit Rs. 1.8 billion in public funds for an event that wouldn’t pass muster in a rural school’s annual concert. Meanwhile, Sri Lankans — actual human beings — were skipping meals, fainting on trains, and sending their children to school on empty stomachs.
Did the IMF notice?
If they did, they didn’t say.
If they didn’t, they should pack up and go home.
And it wasn’t just Ranil’s “festival of folly.”
Another revelation that has raised eyebrows and blood pressure: the Ministry of Health imported billions of rupees worth of bottled water — not medicine, not vaccines, not medical equipment — but water. Bottled water, marked up several times over, procured through a network of shell companies and supplier friends.
It begs the question: What precisely were IMF officials doing while these contracts were being signed under their very noses? Were they asleep? Were they hypnotised by bureaucratic PowerPoint slides?
Because from where the Sri Lankan taxpayer stands, the IMF either failed to notice or chose not to care.
One theory circulating in political tea houses and civil society forums is that the IMF team simply got too comfortable.
“Geeta Gopinath is brilliant — no one doubts that,” says a senior official at the Central Bank, who requested anonymity. “But brilliance doesn’t mean integrity. And it doesn’t excuse turning a blind eye while living in the Cinnamon Grand.”
Indeed, stories of IMF staffers frequenting luxury spas, sipping imported wine, and calling Uber Premier cars from Colombo 7 mansions are becoming part of local folklore. “They weren’t here to rescue us,” quips one university student on Twitter. “They were here for the minibar.”
The optics are painful. While women leave their children behind to clean floors in Kuwait, and state workers forgo salary increments, IMF consultants dined at the Ministry cafeteria and returned to their hotel infinity pools.
Adding insult to injury, the IMF’s latest recommendation is that Sri Lanka eliminate tax holidays for foreign direct investment (FDI). “Sri Lanka cannot afford such generous concessions,” the Fund warned sternly last month.
That might sound prudent — if the IMF wasn’t already blindfolded to existing, long-standing tax holidays enjoyed by Western multinational apparel giants operating in Sri Lanka.
Companies that have imported raw material duty-free for decades, paid virtually zero taxes, and exported billions in garments without repatriating foreign currency back to Sri Lanka — all under the pretext of "export development."
Did the IMF question these? Demand scrutiny?
Not even a whisper.
“Apparently, tax concessions for European textile lords are sacred,” says an economic analyst. “But incentives for small Malaysian investors in Jaffna? Unacceptable!”
The NPP-led parliamentary committee investigating misuse of funds was blunt: Sri Lanka’s economic mismanagement wasn’t just about miscalculation. It was theft.
And it’s not theoretical.
Over 1 million Sri Lankans have fled the country since 2021 — not as tourists or expats, but as survival migrants. Women, in particular, have borne the brunt. Housemaids in Saudi Arabia, caregivers in Israel, cleaners in Cyprus — all remitting billions in hard-earned foreign currency, while the elite drank Perrier on state budgets.
The IMF is yet to issue a single public statement acknowledging the human cost of the “fiscal discipline” it demanded. Austerity, in theory, looks like a budget line. In practice, it’s a skipped lunch and a mother working 4,000 miles away from her child.
Ultimately, the IMF’s focus seems worryingly singular: debt restructuring.
Gopinath and Srinivasan are not here to ask about Rs. 1.8 billion spent on a DJ booth. They’re here to confirm that the Central Bank is aligning with “targets” and that “macro indicators” are “on track.”
And that’s the IMF’s greatest sin — moral abstraction.
It is more concerned about “SDR allocations” than hospital wards. It demands VAT increases while letting $10 billion in apparel revenue escape. It preaches reform to a country where schoolkids faint from hunger while letting corruption fester directly under its surveillance.
Dear Madam Deputy Managing Director,
Dear Respected Regional Director,
We hope you enjoy your cinnamon-infused welcome drinks and ceremonial draping at Bandaranaike Airport. We know you’ll take pretty photographs next to the Central Bank crest and issue well-rehearsed lines about “fiscal prudence.”
But before you leave, please answer one question:
Where were you when the people’s money was vanishing?
Accountability is not retroactive. The point of embedding international monitors inside a Finance Ministry is to prevent theft, not document it after the fact. If the IMF cannot act with vigilance and impartiality, then it becomes part of the problem.
It’s high time that the IMF — and its visiting dignitaries — admit failure. Under their watch, billions were wasted, tax loopholes exploited, and suffering deepened. No amount of “debt restructuring” can scrub that stain.
This visit must be more than symbolic. The IMF must confront its own blind spots, interrogate the elite corruption it ignored, and stop preaching to the poor while coddling the powerful.
Sri Lanka doesn’t just need liquidity. It needs honesty.
It doesn’t just need advisors. It needs allies.
And most of all, it doesn’t need another bureaucratic sermon from people who watched the ship sink while sipping tea on the top deck.
-By LeN Economic Correspondent
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by (2025-06-11 22:59:27)
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