Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent assessment her Department has made of the human development and social economic indicators of Sri Lanka in comparison to other SE Asian countries.

The UK is closely monitoring the political, security, and economic situation in Sri Lanka, including the impact on livelihoods. We continue to encourage a peaceful, democratic, and inclusive approach to resolving the current political and economic challenges. The most recent available data (2020) for Sri Lanka indicates that it performs well against South Asia neighbours on high-level human development and social economic indicators, particularly infant mortality rates. However, the available data does not capture the severity of the current economic crisis and impact of recent economic shocks such as Covid-19, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the floating of the Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR) and Sri Lanka's debt default in May 2022. We have not made a recent assessment comparing Sri Lankan indicators to those in South East Asian countries.

We recognise the difficult economic situation and welcome the start of in-depth discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on reforms needed to bring the economy back to a sustainable path. UK economic support is through multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and United Nations (UN), as underlined by the Prime Minister when he spoke to the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe on 30 May.