[chartist kao]

borrow many credit cards and use the money from the new cards to pay off debts from older cards

Skip the IMF’s bitter medicine for now and just keep adding on new debt to pay off the old, according to current and former Sri Lankan officials. Sri Lanka agreed, and soon $3 billion in new credits poured in from Chinese banks in 2020 and 2021.


billion
Now that plan has blown up, plunging Sri Lanka into chaos. Amid crushing debt and sky-high inflation, the country has run out of U.S. dollars to pay for imports of basic goods, leaving citizens waiting for hours to buy fuel and major cities scrambling to keep the lights on. By the time Sri Lanka finally decided in April to apply for IMF relief, its economy was nosediving toward one of the deepest recessions since the country’s independence in 1948, fueling a popular rebellion that saw the president chased from his home by hordes of demonstrator