Here’s how the debt holders’ haircuts compare:
🇦🇷 Argentina (2005): about 75%
🇬🇷 Greece (2012): about 64%
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka (2024): an estimated 40% net-present-value concession on the international bond restructuring, based on the government’s calculation under the IMF baseline scenario and an 11% discount rate.
These figures suggest that the estimated losses for creditors in Argentina and Greece were larger than those in Sri Lanka’s international bond deal.
But they are not perfectly like-for-like: the restructurings happened in different circumstances, and the estimates use different valuation assumptions. Sri Lanka’s 40% figure is an estimate of the reduction in the present value of payments—not a 40% cut to the bonds’ face value.
A restructuring can reduce what creditors receive through several channels: principal cuts, lower interest, and longer repayment periods. That’s why the face-value reduction alone doesn’t tell the whole story. These figures also refer to the international bondholder deals, not every category of debt or the total economic burden borne by Sri Lankan people.
Bottom line: Argentina and Greece had larger widely cited creditor-loss estimates. Sri Lanka’s deal was estimated to deliver a 40% NPV concession on the stated assumptions, but the percentages shouldn’t be treated as a precise, identical-measure ranking.
Could Sri Lankans have been better negotiators? Doesn’t matter what I think; what do you think?
Please note I used AI to do research. This is an important discussion for Sri Lankan people to start having