Country profile · South Asia
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has about 23.2 million people (UN, 2025). President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has governed since September 2024, and his party holds two-thirds of the seats in parliament. Sri Lanka has no treaty allies and keeps close ties with both India and China. It defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022 and has been in an IMF program since 2023.
Where Sri Lanka ranks
All rankings →Which alliances is Sri Lanka in?
All alliances →Who runs Sri Lanka?
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was born on November 24, 1968, in Dewahuwa, a village in Matale District. His father was a farm worker who later became an office aide. In 1987 he joined the student wing of the JVP, a Marxist party, as its second armed uprising began. Tens of thousands of people died before the uprising was crushed in 1989. Dissanayake studied science, entered parliament in 2000 and has led the JVP since 2014. He won only 3.16% in the 2019 presidential election. In September 2024 he won with 42.31% in the first count and then on second preferences. In November 2024 his National People's Power won 159 of 225 seats in parliament, the first two-thirds majority for one party since 1977 (chart). Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe was arrested in August 2025 over the use of public money for a private trip. In September and October 2026 the anti-corruption commission arrested Namal Rajapaksa, a member of parliament, and his mother Shiranthi, a former first lady.
- National People's Power (the government) 159
- Samagi Jana Balawegaya (Sajith Premadasa) 40
- Tamil, Muslim and other parties 26
Photo (September 2025): Cabinet Public Affairs Office, Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
Who are Sri Lanka's allies and rivals?
Sri Lanka has no treaty allies and calls itself neutral. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited India first, in December 2024, and China a month later. India gave about $4 billion of help during the 2022 crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited in April 2025, and the two countries signed their first defence cooperation agreement. The main quarrel with India is over fishing. Sri Lanka's navy arrested 526 Indian fishermen in 2024 and 317 in 2025. China is Sri Lanka's largest government lender. Chinese loans built the port of Hambantota, and Chinese money paid for a new district on reclaimed land in Colombo. India objects to visits by Chinese research ships. Sri Lanka banned them for a year in 2024 and turned one away in March 2026. The main shipping lane between Asia and Europe passes about 10 nautical miles south of Sri Lanka. On March 4, 2026 a US submarine sank an Iranian warship about 40 nautical miles off the coast, and Sri Lanka's navy rescued 32 sailors.
- Hambantota Port built with Chinese loans. China Merchants leased 70% of it for 99 years in 2017 for $1.12 billion.
- Colombo The main port. Port City was built on reclaimed land with Chinese money. India's Adani group has run a container terminal here since April 2025.
- Trincomalee Deep natural harbor. India, Sri Lanka and the UAE agreed in 2025 to build an energy hub here.
- Kachchatheevu Uninhabited islet India gave Sri Lanka in 1974. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu wants it back.
- Mullivaikkal Coastal strip where the army defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, ending the civil war.
- Sri Lanka
- Partner
Who does Sri Lanka trade with?
Sri Lanka exported $13.58 billion of goods in 2025 and imported $21.48 billion (Central Bank of Sri Lanka). The United States bought about 23% of exports, and China and India supplied almost half of imports (chart). Clothing earned $4.91 billion, tea $1.51 billion and coconut products $1.23 billion. The United States set a 44% tariff on Sri Lankan goods in April 2025 and cut it to 20% that August. After the US Supreme Court struck those tariffs down in February 2026, the rate fell to 10%. Sri Lankans working abroad, most of them in the Middle East, sent home a record $8.08 billion in 2025. A record 2.36 million tourists came, more than a fifth of them from India. After the Strait of Hormuz closed in March 2026, Sri Lanka began rationing fuel with QR codes, and in August its tea sales to Iran fell 76%. The economy grew 5.0% in 2025, and the IMF expects 4.0% in 2026.
Sells to
Share of Sri Lanka's exports
United States22.7%
India8.0%
United Kingdom7.3%
Germany5.4%
Italy5.1%
Buys from
Share of Sri Lanka's imports
China24.3%- India20.4%
United Arab Emirates6.8%
Japan5.3%
Singapore4.6%
Goods, 2025. UN Comtrade, as reported by Sri Lanka.
Why did Sri Lanka go bankrupt in 2022?
On April 12, 2022 Sri Lanka stopped paying its foreign debts, its first default since independence. The government had cut the sales tax from 15% to 8% in December 2019. The Easter Sunday bombings of April 2019, which killed about 270 people, and then COVID emptied the hotels. In 2021 a ban on chemical fertilizer cut the main rice harvest by almost 40%. By May 2022 the central bank had less than $50 million of usable foreign currency. Fuel ran out, and inflation reached 69.8% in September 2022. In July 2022 protesters stormed the President's House, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country. International bondholders were the largest group of lenders, with about a third of the government's foreign debt. China held about a fifth, and Sri Lanka owed Chinese lenders $8.7 billion at the end of 2024 (chart). The IMF approved a $3 billion loan in March 2023, and bondholders accepted a 27% cut in December 2024. Public debt was 101% of GDP in 2025 (IMF).
Public foreign debt owed to China, end of 2024
Full ranking →
Pakistan$22.4bn
Angola$14.4bn- Sri Lanka$8.7bn
Ethiopia$7.4bn
Bangladesh$6.6bn
Egypt$5.9bn
Kenya$5.4bn
World Bank International Debt Statistics, 2025 edition
How did Sri Lanka's civil war end?
The army defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009. Sri Lankan Tamils, about 12% of the population, live mostly in the north and east. A 1956 law made Sinhala the only official language. In 1976 Velupillai Prabhakaran founded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to fight for a Tamil state. On July 23, 1983 the LTTE killed 13 soldiers in an ambush, and the anti-Tamil riots that followed, known as Black July, started the war. LTTE suicide bombers killed India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lanka's President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the army trapped the LTTE on a coastal strip at Mullivaikkal and killed Prabhakaran on May 18, 2009. The UN estimates that 80,000 to 100,000 people died in the whole war. A UN panel said in 2011 that up to 40,000 civilians may have died in the final months, mostly from government shelling. The government says fewer than 10,000. A UN team is still gathering evidence, and Sri Lanka rejects it.