COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday said he had requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to send a staff-level delegation to the crisis-hit country as soon as possible to finalise a staff-level agreement.

"The Prime Minister explained that negotiations regarding bridging finance was reliant on Sri Lanka and the IMF concluding a staff-level agreement," Wickremesinghe's office said in a statement.

Sri Lanka is in talks with the IMF for a loan package to help navigate its worst economic crisis in seven decades.

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Tom Hogue)