Opposition urges IMF to act on Lanka's governance failures

The people's United Opposition yesterday appealed to the IMF to take tangible action to rein in the Lankan government.

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Following a meeting with IMF Mission in Colombo yesterday, the group issued the following statement: "As leaders or representatives of several groups in the Opposition, we are seeking an urgent appointment to meet with you on any date between 16 and 18 June to focus on some critical issues.

"Our purpose is to bring to your immediate attention a severe and rapidly growing concern among the general public of Sri Lanka. As the citizens who ultimately bear the sole legal and financial obligation to service and repay international lenders, the public is growing increasingly alarmed by the state's failure to safeguard national revenue and borrowed funds.

"While we acknowledge the IMF's contribution and assistance in stabilizing Sri Lanka's macroeconomic framework, we refuse to accept a reality where these gruelling stabilization efforts, along with the heavy taxes extracted from the public, are exploited, mismanaged, or outright wasted by a corrupt or incompetent state administration.

"While ordinary citizens continue to absorb the heavy personal impact of elevated direct taxes, expanded indirect levies, and high utility tariffs, a series of highly publicized, colossal public finance leakages, operational failures, and procurement anomalies have emerged within the state apparatus.

These incidents point to a catastrophic collapse of internal controls and governance safeguards across multiple state organs: "Procurement and Tender Violations in Energy: The recent Special Audit Report on the 2025/2026 coal procurement exposed direct violations of mandatory bidding registrations and quality controls, costing the state billions of rupees in avoidable overconsumption losses.