Bankrupt Sri Lanka will receive a $2.9 billion conditional bailout to repair its struggling finances, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday after a nagging economic crisis that saw the island nation’s president ousted from the country.

Months of acute food, fuel and medicine shortages, widespread power outages and runaway inflation have plagued the country after it ran out of dollars to fund even its most essential imports.

The country defaulted on its $51 billion in foreign debt, and angry protesters stormed the home of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July, prompting the leader to flee the island and hand in his resignation from Singapore.

“Sri Lanka faces an acute crisis … disproportionately borne by the poor and vulnerable,” the IMF said in a statement after nine days of talks in the capital Colombo.

The IMF board must ratify Thursday’s staff agreement, which is conditional on the government reaching an agreement with creditors to restructure their loans.

But the lender’s head of mission, Peter Breuer, said creditors must also help Sri Lanka emerge from a “deep crisis” and return to debt service.

“It is really in the interest of all believers to work with Sri Lanka on this front,” Breuer told reporters.

“If creditors are unwilling to provide these assurances, it would actually deepen Sri Lanka’s crisis and undermine its ability to repay.”

China — the country’s largest bilateral lender, which accounts for more than 10 percent of lending — has so far not publicly backed down its offer to lend more rather than cut outstanding loans.

Breuer could not say when the IMF financing would be available but stressed that Sri Lanka’s needs are “urgent” and must be addressed immediately.

He added that IMF financing alone would not be enough to address Sri Lanka’s deep-seated structural economic problems.

“Additional funding from multilateral partners is needed to close funding gaps,” Breuer said.

The IMF’s announcement of distributing a $2.9 billion package spread over four years falls short of the $3-4 billion Sri Lanka is aiming for.

Financial analyst WA Wijewardena, a former deputy central bank governor, said the government must implement more painful reforms to secure funding.

“This shows that Sri Lanka should do much more to meet the IMF’s requirements,” he told AFP. “Debt sustainability is the key issue.”

He said increasing the government’s share of revenue, which is currently one of the lowest in the world, is a serious challenge given the current economic climate.

The central bank expects GDP to fall by a record 8 percent this year, slightly below the IMF’s own forecast of 8.7 percent.

The IMF said Sri Lanka had agreed to increase revenues, remove subsidies, maintain a floating exchange rate and rebuild its foreign exchange reserves, which had hit rock bottom.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office after his predecessor fled the country, this week announced more tax hikes and sweeping reforms to bring the debt under control.

His government had already hiked fuel and electricity prices more than threefold and scrapped energy subsidies, a key requirement for the IMF’s bailout.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a hammer blow to the island’s tourism industry, drying up remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad – both major foreign exchange earners.

Rajapaksa’s government has been criticized for introducing unsustainable tax cuts, which have pushed up public debt and deepened the crisis.

Inflation hit a new monthly record in August, with the country’s main benchmark registering an average price increase of 64.3 percent, while the rupee has lost more than 45 percent of its value against the greenback this year.

The authorities resisted asking the IMF for help until the country’s mounting debt burden forced a default in April.

At the height of Sri Lanka’s petrol shortages, motorists had to wait days and sometimes even weeks for refills, although strict fuel rationing has since shortened queues.

Public anger at the government’s mismanagement of the crisis peaked in July when protesters stormed Rajapaksa’s official residence and occupied several other government buildings.

Wickremesinghe has since restored order, with security forces cracking down on demonstrations and arresting protest leaders.