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IMF

Promises in Peril

Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s meteoric rise to the presidency in Sri Lanka has been followed by a sobering realisation: the promises made during a campaign in the heat of a national crisis are far easier to make than to keep.

Problem of Plenty

Surging reserves can be a double-edged sword as there is a cost to holding them. High reserves will obviously lead to appreciation of the currency and rise in inflation, because capital inflows that result in high reserves are used to buy domestic currency, thereby expanding the domestic monetary base without a corresponding increase in production, and this causes a rise in inflation.