World Bank set to approve $700 mln for Sri Lanka next week

The World Bank is likely to approve$700 million in budgetary and welfare support for Sri Lanka at its next board meeting on June 28, sources told Reuters.

The World Bank is likely to approve$700 million in budgetary and welfare support for Sri Lanka at its next board meeting on June 28, sources told Reuters, the biggest funding tranche for the crisis-hit island nation since an IMF deal in March.

Of the proposed World Bank funding, $500 million will be for budgetary support and is likely to come in two tranches of $250 million each, one of the sources, from the World Bank, said.

The remaining $200 million will be earmarked for programmes to assist the poor, whose numbers have doubled to 25% of the population since the onset of the Indian Ocean nation’s worst economic crisis early last year, another World Bank source said.