Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Sri Lanka PM Announces Economy Collapse


Wed 22 Jun 2022 | 03:48 PM
Rana Atef

Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that its debt-laden economy is collapsed after months of lack of food, fuel, and electricity, in addition, the island's people cannot afford oil, CNN reported on Wednesday.

Wickremesinghe said to the Parliament: “We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food. Our economy has completely collapsed. That is the most serious issue before us today."

In addition, Wickremesinghe is also the acting finance minister who is responsible for saving the economy, which is suffering from heavy and huge debts' burdens, falling tourism revenues and the aftermath of the COVID-19 which caused a surge in costs for commodities.

The Prime Minister added: “Currently, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is $700 million in debt,” adding: “As a result, no country or organization in the world is willing to provide fuel to us. They are even reluctant to provide fuel for cash."

“If steps had at least been taken to slow down the collapse of the economy at the beginning, we would not be facing this difficult situation today. But we lost out on this opportunity. We are now seeing signs of a possible fall to rock bottom."

In the country’s worst economic downturn since independence in 1948, Sri Lanka’s 22 million citizens have experienced weeks of power outages and severe shortages of food, fuel, and other commodities.

According to AFP correspondents, the social-media-organized rally drew the greatest crowds since the crisis erupted last month.

Sri Lanka has recently experienced economic instability due to a significant scarcity of foreign currency, which has prevented the government from paying for basic imports such as fuel.