Sri Lanka, Oct. 5 -- Sri Lanka should take a leaf from India's Dr Manmohan Singh era. When India faced a near-existential balance-of-payments crisis in 1991, it turned to the IMF but Dr Manmohan Singh did not allow the IMF programme to become the country's economic strategy. The IMF helped India survive the crisis, India's own reforms built the recovery.

India did not escape the IMF by rejecting the IMF. It escaped by using the IMF as a bridge, undertaking difficult reforms, rebuilding its foreign-exchange earning capacity and eventually making further IMF borrowing unnecessary.

That distinction is crucial for any country trying to emerge from a balance-of-payments crisis.

There is also an important historical correction. India's deci...