Fukunari Kimura: This is an important paper that analyzes Sri Lanka's sovereign debt crisis during the COVID-19 period. The prime focus of the rescue package provided by the IMF emphasized the chronic twin debt problem that resulted in the public external debt accumulation and heavy debt services. The paper carefully traces the effort to resume macroeconomic stability under the IMF's initiative and furthermore investigates a rather long-lasting structural issue, namely, the relative shrinkage of the tradable sector, particularly in the 2010s. Going beyond the discipline in macroeconomic policy, the paper claims the importance of the pro-trade regime for sustained economic development in the globalization era.

In the following, I would like to quickly review how the paper discusses three important aspects of Sri Lanka's economy. The first is on the government fiscal balance. The main feature of Sri Lanka's crisis was on the sovereign external debt rather than the private...

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