Sri Lanka expects approval from the International Monetary Fund to start the disbursal of $2.9 billion in the third or fourth week of this month, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Tuesday, adding that with support from China, all funding requirements had been met.

Sri Lanka needs to repay about $6 billion on average each year until 2029 and will have to keep engaging with the IMF, Wickremesinghe told parliament.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru and Uditha Jayasinghe in Colombo; Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)