New Delhi, April 19 : On action-packed visit to the US, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday met her Sri Lankan counterpart Ali Sabry on the sidelines of IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington D.C. and discussed current economic situation and its approach towards addressing the prevailing challenges. Sitharaman assured Sri Lanka that as a close friend and good neighbour, India will try to extend all possible cooperation and assistance to Sri Lanka, Finance Ministry said. Facing the worst-financial crisis, Sri Lanka recently announced to suspend the servicing of external public debt. The island nation has been grappling with depleting foreign exchange reserves and has resorted to rationing of imports. While downgrading Sri Lanka’s rating to Ca, global rating agency Moody’s on Monday noted that the country’s foreign exchange reserves adequacy has continued to decline despite continued financing support from bilateral development partners including India and China. “Foreign exchange reserves excluding gold and special drawing rights stood at $1.7 billion at the end of March 2022, sufficient to cover only around 1 month of imports, with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka having fully drawn down its $1.5 billion swap with the People’s Bank of China. This compares to foreign exchange reserves of $2.1 billion as of the end of September 2021 and with the swap still a backup facility,” said Moody’s. India last month extended $1 billion line of credit to Sri Lanka to help it deal with the ongoing crisis. It has also provided fuel and food to tide over the crisis. Meanwhile, Sitharaman also met Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati on the sidelines of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting (FMCBG) in Washington. “The two Ministers discussed the current global situation and G20 Indonesian Presidency’s response to it, along with other G20 FMCBG agenda including global health, international financial architecture and sustainable finance,” said Finance Ministry. During the meeting, Sitharaman highlighted the need for collective attention of G20 on energy price volatility, inflation pressure and the impact of the geopolitical tensions on the global economy. Apart from high-level meetings with World Bank President David Malpass, IMF Chief and several bilateral interactions, Sitharaman is scheduled to hold one-on-one meetings with CEOs from the semiconductor, energy and other sectors of priority for the government. NK