evidence: The agreement came almost one year after the government of Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced Sri Lanka’s imminent default on its sovereign debt, becoming the first Asia–Pacific country to do so in over two decades. This admission of inability to service external loans underlined the severity of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis that first broke in 2021 and sparked widespread and large-scale protests between March and July 2022. [...] As of March 2022, useable foreign reserves had plunged to 400 million US dollars, which was less than a week’s import bill. Meanwhile, the amount of debt to be serviced between 2022 and 2027 had grown to gargantuan proportions: on average, Sri Lanka had to find over 4 billion dollars each year to repay creditors, while a staggering 7 billion was needed in 2023 alone. The due dates for repayment of several international sovereign bonds were fast approaching, while the island’s useable foreign reserves had dipped all the way to 25 million dollars by April 2022. The state treasury consisted of loans and currency swaps, rather than income from revenue and investment. Its composition aside, reserves were nowhere near enough to meet Sri Lanka’s external obligations even for the following month. [...] The government of Sri Lanka began putting out feelers to the IMF in mid-March 2022, and made its interest in a new programme clear in April 2022 as defaulting on its foreign debt became unavoidable.