COLOMBO —
Sri Lanka is bankrupt and the acute pain of its unprecedented economic crisis
will drag on through the end of next year, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
told parliament Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
The island
nation’s 22 million people have endured months of galloping inflation and
lengthy power cuts after the government ran out of foreign currency to import
vital goods, with economists blaming mismanagement for the worsening economic
woes.
Wickremesinghe
said the once-prosperous country would go into deep recession this year and
acute shortages of food, fuel and medicine would continue.
“We will have to
face difficulties in 2023 as well,” the premier said. “This is the truth. This
is the reality.”
He said Sri
Lanka’s ongoing bailout talks with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) depended on finalizing a debt restructuring plan with creditors by August.
“We are now
participating in the negotiations as a bankrupt country,” Wickremesinghe said.
“Due to the state
of bankruptcy our country is in, we have to submit a plan on our debt
sustainability to them separately. Only when (the IMF) are satisfied with that
plan can we reach an agreement.”
The IMF last week
said more work was needed to set the nation’s finances right and repair its
runaway fiscal deficit before a deal could be struck on a funding arrangement
to address its balance of payments crisis.
It has also told
authorities to do more to fight corruption and bring an end to costly energy
subsidies that had long been a drain on the government budget.
Dying for petrol
Sri Lanka is almost entirely without petrol and the government has shut
down non-essential public services in an effort to conserve fuel.
There have been
clashes outside the few petrol stations still selling fuel, with tens of
thousands lining up for the slim chance of securing limited supplies and no
fresh stocks expected for at least two weeks.
Police said a
60-year-old motorist was found dead in his car on Tuesday after waiting for
days to fill up at a petrol station in the capital.
There have been
over a dozen similar deaths of drivers waiting in long fuel queues over the
past two months.
The UN estimates
that about 80 percent of the public are skipping meals to cope with food
shortages and record prices.
Wickremesinghe on
Tuesday said the IMF expected Sri Lanka’s economy to shrink by seven percent
this year, even worse than the dire forecasts issued by the country’s central
bank.
He said inflation
could climb above 60 percent, and rapid currency depreciation over the past few
months had wiped out the value of savings by half.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
