Sri Lanka set to begin talks to restructure debt of $30bln-by Uditha Jayasinghe Source:Zawya Crisis-hit Sri Lanka will begin on Friday the tricky task of debt renegotiation with a raft of private and bilateral creditors, including China, India and Japan, to restructure and repay nearly $30 billion that it owes. WHY THE NEED TO RESTRUCTURE DEBT? Years of economic mismanagement and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed foreign exchange reserves to record lows in the worst economic crisis in more than seven decades. Sri Lanka clinched a staff-level deal in September for a $2.9-billion bailout package from the International Monetary Fund after its central bank declared a default on some foreign debt in April, saying payment was “challenging and impossible”. ...