Paris Club likely to provide financial assurances to IMF on Sri Lanka debt.

• The Paris Club, an informal group of creditor nations, will provide financial assurances to the International Monetary Fund on Sri Lanka’s debt, Reuters has reported.
• An assurance from the Paris Club, as well as other bilateral creditors, is one of the conditions that Sri Lanka has to fulfil for the IMF to begin disbursing a $2.9 bn bailout package to the beleaguered nation that all but collapsed last year under a severe economic crisis.

What is the Paris Club?

• The Paris Club is a group of mostly western creditor countries that grew from a 1956 meeting in which Argentina agreed to meet its public creditors in Paris. Their objective is to find sustainable debt-relief solutions for countries that are unable to repay their bilateral loans.
• It describes itself as a forum where official creditors meet to solve payment difficulties faced by debtor countries.
• All 22 are members of the group called Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
  • India and China are not members.