In April Sri Lanka suspended selected external debts and in May defaulted on the contractual agreements on these commercial borrowings. SLDBs are under domestic debt but issued in dollars and ISBs are external debts issued in dollars. Sri Lanka now has arrears of USD 1,878Mn for ISBs and SLDBs to settle in the future debt restructuring process.
The outstanding ( not yet matured) SLDBs stand at USD 946.2Mn and ISBs stand at USD 11,550Mn as of November 2022. Even though CBSL has said there will not be a domestic debt restructuring, SLDBs are under restructuring as some of the investors are being offered LKR settlement instead of dollar settlement.