• PLF official underscores renegotiation provision in IMF agreement.
• Ratnayake says they intend to engage Washington-based lender.
• Presidential candidate Dissanayaka had vowed to reduce taxes.

COLOMBO: The party of presidential candidate and Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, likely to win Sri Lanka's presidential vote on Sunday, said that they would renegotiate and not scrap the country's unpopular $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout agreement.

"Our plan is to engage with the IMF and introduce certain amendments [....] We will not tear up the IMF programme. It is a binding document, but there is a provision to renegotiate," People's Liberation Front's politburo member Bimal Ratnayake told AFP.

He said Dissanayaka, 55, had pledged to reduce income taxes that were doubled by President Ranil Wickremesinghe and slash sales taxes on food and medicines.

"We think we can get those reductions into the programme and continue with the four-year bailout programme."

Dissanayaka's rivals had raised fears that his Marxist party would scrap the IMF programme and push the country back into an economic crisis similar to the chaos of 2022 when a foreign exchange crisis led to shortages of essentials sparking street protests which eventually forced then-leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and resign.

If elected, Dissanayaka would be Sri Lanka's first Marxist head of state.

Earlier in the day, Dissanayaka had secured 60.21% of the 164,000 votes counted, out of just over 700,000.

About 76% of the 17.1 million person electorate turned out for Saturday's vote, and final results are expected later Sunday.

The authorities declared an eight-hour evening curfew across the country while results were being announced via manual counts, as Sri Lanka does not have electronic voting.

Wickremesinghe is seeking a fresh term to press ahead with his austerity measures after claiming credit for stabilising the economy after a crushing default on the national debt in 2022.