What the standing facility rates are
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka runs two standing facilities that any participating bank can use overnight, without an auction. At the Standing Deposit Facility a bank with spare cash can leave it with the Central Bank and earn the Standing Deposit Facility Rate (SDFR). At the Standing Lending Facility a bank that is short can borrow from the Central Bank at the Standing Lending Facility Rate (SLFR). No bank lends to another for less than it could earn at the Central Bank, or borrows from another for more than the Central Bank would charge, so the two rates form a floor and a ceiling for the overnight market. The Central Bank calls the space between them the Standing Rate Corridor.
The facilities began in the 1990s as the repurchase and reverse repurchase facilities, and the rates kept those names until 2 January 2014, when they were renamed the SDFR and SLFR. The Central Bank's concept note on the Overnight Policy Rate sets out that history.
A policy rate until November 2024
From the early 2000s to November 2024 the corridor was how the Central Bank signalled policy. A tighter stance meant raising both rates, an easier one cutting them, and the decision was announced in a monetary policy press release. The decision was the Monetary Board's until the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Act No. 16 of 2023 gave it to a new Monetary Policy Board.
The corridor's width changed over the years. The concept note records that the Central Bank narrowed it from 200 basis points to 100 basis points to sharpen the signal, and that even then markets could not tell where inside it the Central Bank wanted overnight rates to settle. That is the problem the single policy rate was introduced to solve.
The largest move in the series came on 8 April 2022, when the Monetary Policy Review of that day raised both rates by 700 basis points, effective from the close of business, in response to the inflation and exchange rate crisis.
Since November 2024: tied to the OPR
The Monetary Policy Review of 27 November 2024 introduced the Overnight Policy Rate and stated that the SDFR and SLFR would no longer be considered policy rates. They are now linked to the OPR by a margin the Central Bank decides, which it has set at 50 basis points either way, and the policy rates page publishes them beside it.
This tracker carries on through that change rather than stopping, because the facilities still operate and these are the rates they pay and charge. Read the points from 27 November 2024 as consequences of OPR decisions, not decisions in their own right. To follow monetary policy since then, use the OPR tracker.
How it reached loans and savings
While the corridor was the policy rate, a move in it reached borrowers and savers the way a move in the OPR does now: through the rates banks charge their best customers, tracked by the Average Weighted Prime Lending Rate, and from there into variable-rate loans as they reset. Fixed deposits and fixed-rate periods on loans kept their rate until they ended. For a loan you are paying today, what matters is the reference rate in your agreement and when it resets; the mortgage calculator and the loan calculator show what a different rate does to the instalment.
Reading the chart and the table
Each point is a date on which either rate changed, with the SDFR as the lower edge of the band and the SLFR as the upper edge. Dates are as the Central Bank's historical policy rates table gives them; some changes took effect at the close of business on that date. The table also dates changes to a penal rate and to reserve requirements on days the two rates held, and those days are left out. The first point is the corridor in force on 5 January 2000, where the Central Bank's table begins, not a change.