ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka is one of numerous lower middle-income nations suffering the consequences of external shocks to an economy with rising debt levels, reducing state revenue and growing fiscal deficits. This article questions the extent to which public policy driven by the political class and supported by a politicized bureaucracy was instrumental in laying the conditions that hastened Sri Lanka's sovereign debt default of 2022. The article pays specific attention to the rationale for policies such as the 2019 tax cuts, which seemed counter to the consensus held among international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
