In terms of the provisions of the Financial Transactions Reporting Act, No. 6 of 2006 (FTRA), the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Sri Lanka entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) on November 01, 2018 at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to receive intelligence information related to investigations and prosecutions of money laundering, terrorist financing and other related crimes.

Mr. A H K Jagath Chandrasiri, Commissioner General of the DMT and Mr. D M Rupasinghe, Director, FIU signed the MOU on behalf of the respective institutions in the presence of Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, who is also the Chairman of the Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) National Coordinating Committee.

The attention of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has been drawn to recent newspaper articles on increased money printing by the CBSL in the past few days. The CBSL wishes to provide the following clarification as the concepts and facts in such articles remain grossly inaccurate and misleading:

These articles suggest that the CBSL has printed a large amount of money recently to help finance the government’s fiscal commitments. Usually, money printing refers to the expansion of Reserve Money (Monetary Base). Reserve Money, which was at Rs. 939.8 billion at end 2017 and at Rs. 1,010.5 billion at end September 2018, was recorded at Rs. 1,020.8 billion on 2 November 2018. This is a year-on-year growth in Reserve Money of 11.6 per cent, which is well within the CBSL projections for the year.