Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2021-06-28

Making provisions for granting an additional interest for Special Deposit Accounts

- Approval of the Cabinet has been granted previously to open Special Deposit Accounts with effect from 2020 04 07 to encourage inflow of foreign exchange to Sri Lanka and to pay an additional interest to further detain the deposits of such accounts. Accordingly, relevant regulations have been issued under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Act No.12 of 2017, and under the existing provisions it is also possible to rollover the special deposit accounts operated with a tenure of 06 months or 12 months and to grant an additional interest for such Special Deposit Accounts. However no provisions are available to pay an additional interest for the Special Deposit Accounts which have been rolledover exceeding the period of 12 months and therefore, the proposal made by the Hon. Prime Minister in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, to impose regulations incorporating provisions required for the purpose in terms of the section 7(1) of the Foreign Exchange Act No.12 of 2017 and thereafter present the said regulations for approval in Parliament, was approved by the Cabinet.