The Ministry of Defense of Sri Lanka announced Friday that it will reduce by one third the number of troops in the Armed Forces to alleviate as much as possible the deep economic crisis in the country, immersed in difficult negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and still limping from the revolution that broke out in July 2022 due to rising prices.
The minister, Premitha Bandara Tennakoon, has framed this decision in the relative external security enjoyed by the country after the record number of troops recruited between 2017 and 2019, when the Sri Lankan Army reached 317,000 military personnel, a figure still higher than those at the height of the war against the Tamil rebels.
Tennakoon has now confirmed that the current number of 200,783 troops will be reduced by a third to 135,000 by 2024, in the beginning of a process that will culminate in 2030, when the number of military personnel is expected to be capped at 100,000, according to the statement picked up by the Ceylonese news portal NewsCutter.
«Military spending is basically a state expenditure that indirectly stimulates and opens avenues for economic growth by ensuring national and human security,» he said in the statement, where he called for an exercise in candor in relating the impact of maintaining the military on the country’s economy.
«Military strength and long-term economic development are two sides of the same coin that coexist, but are never openly discussed,» he lamented.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Finance Shehan Semasingh on Friday also reiterated the uncertainty surrounding negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, a lack of concreteness that «is taking a heavy toll on the people of Sri Lanka.»
The secretary explained that, despite «significant progress in the bailout process», reflected in the preliminary signing of a staff-level agreement, Sri Lanka has not yet received financial guarantees from its bilateral partners and, as a result, «has not been able to obtain the approval of the IMF Executive Board», as he indicated during the regional economic conference Voice of Global South Summit, reported by the Colombo Page portal.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
