Oct 06, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s central bank is facilitating imports to maintain growth by selling reserves and not trying to defend a particular exchange rate, Deputy Governor Dharma Dheerasinghe said.
Equity markets inflows which were about 150 million dollars negative will turn positive towards the end of the year with investments from the Asian region, Dheerasinghe said.
“We are at the moment facilitating an inter-temporal process where at the moment we have high import bills mainly because of oil imports and other investments goods imports,” Dheerasinghe said in an interview in Colombo.
“We are not trying to defend the exchange rate but what we are trying to do is to facilitate growth.”
In 2011 Sri Lanka is expected to grow at 8.3 percent, he said.
He said foreign reserves are expected to pick up towards the end of the year with about a billion dollars investments expected to equity markets, bank capital raising and corporate inflows.