Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka’s current Prime Minister, has been appointed as the country’s Finance Minister amidst the ongoing economic crisis.
Last week the country officially defaulted on its international debt as it failed to make a payment worth an estimated $78m. Sri Lanka has become the first Asia-Pacific country in decades to default on foreign debt.
On 20 May, Rajapaksa expanded his cabinet to include 9 Ministers but failed to appoint a finance minister. The cabinet was subsequently expanded on 23 May to include an additional 8 ministers, but there was no appointment for the finance minister.
The ministers included during his second expansion are members of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), a paramilitary organisation with close ties with the Rajapaksas.
The new Ministers inducted during the second time of the Cabinet expansion belong to the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and its allies — the SLFP and the EPDP, a Tamil minority party in the north.
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