Sri Lankan shares jumped sharply on Wednesday after plunging over 20% in the last five sessions, as the World Bank agreed to provide the debt-stricken country with $600 million in financial assistance to help pay for essential imports.

* The CSE All-Share index closed 5.43% higher at 7,280.52. It is still down around 40% this year.

* The World Bank will release $400 million "shortly" and would continue to help Sri Lanka to overcome the current economic crisis, it said in a statement Tuesday.

* Sri Lanka has also appealed to multiple countries and multilateral organisations for bridge financing until it gets aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with whom Sri Lanka kicked off talks earlier this month.

* The stock market was closed for two weeks after the central bank hiked interest rates by 700 basis points earlier this month to counter soaring inflation. The two sessions of trade this week since the market reopened were marked by heavy falls and led to the market shutting early.

* The IMF has said that Sri Lanka must tighten monetary policy, raise tax and adopt flexible exchange rates to address its debt crisis.

* Heavyweights LOLC Holdings and Expolanka Holdings soared 33.7% and 49.8%, respectively, after suffering hefty losses in recent sessions.

* The equity market turnover was 2.18 billion rupees ($6.32 million), compared with 800.4 million rupees in the truncated session on Tuesday.

* Trading volume rose to 144.7 million shares from 91.8 million shares on Tuesday.

* Foreign investors were net buyers in the equity market, purchasing shares worth 82.2 million rupees, while domestic investors were net sellers, offloading 2.14 billion rupees worth of shares, exchange data showed.

* For a report on global markets, click ($1 = 345.0000 Sri Lankan rupees) (Reporting by Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)