Sri Lanka and major creditors formally launched talks to restructure the nation’s debt without China — its biggest bilateral lender — a sign of growing frustration with Beijing’s approach to debt woes in the developing world.
Finance chiefs from India, Japan and the Paris Club of sovereign creditors held a joint briefing Thursday evening in Washington with the International Monetary Fund to mark the start of the restructuring.
The event was aimed at injecting new momentum into Sri Lankan debt talks caught in a standoff between China and other lenders over how best to deal with the island nation’s debt problems, people familiar with the matter said. They declined to be identified because the talks are private.