Sri Lanka will restrict fuel imports for the next 12 months because of a severe shortage of foreign exchange, its energy minister said, as the island nation’s new government seeks to find a way out of a crippling economic crisis.<\/p>\n
The country of 22 million has been grappling with a lack of essentials, including fuel and medicines, for months, after its foreign exchange reserves ran dry because of economic mismanagement and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
“Due to Forex issues, Fuel imports has to be restricted in the next 12 months,” Sri Lanka’s Minister for Power and Energy, Kanchana Wijesekera, said in a tweet, explaining the rationale behind a fuel rationing system that will be implemented this week.<\/p>\n
The rationing system is among the first steps that Sri Lanka’s new President Ranil Wickremesinghe will take to ease the impact of the crisis after taking office last week following a victory in a parliament vote.<\/p>\n
His predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country and then resigned earlier this month after mass protests against his mishandling of the economy, with protesters storming his official residence and office.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka also reopened its schools on Monday after severe fuel shortages and political unrest kept them closed for nearly a month.<\/p>\n
However, public sector employees have been asked to continue working from home for one more month, the government said in a circular issued on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Lanka IOC, the country’s second largest fuel retailer, will import two fuel shipments of around 30,000 tonnes each in August, its managing director Manoj Gupta said.<\/p>\n
“We are working collectively with the government to reduce the pain and our priority is to supply to industries,” Gupta told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Sri Lanka is in talks with the International Monetary Fund about a bailout package worth up to $3 billion, while it also seeks help from allies, including neighbouring India and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sri Lanka will restrict fuel imports for the next 12 months because of a severe shortage of foreign exchange, its energy minister said, as the island nation’s new government seeks to find a way out of a crippling economic crisis. The country of 22 million has been grappling with a lack of essentials, including fuel and medicines, for months, after its foreign exchange reserves ran dry because of economic mismanagement and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Due to Forex issues, Fuel imports has to be restricted in the next 12 months,” Sri Lanka’s Minister for Power and Energy, Kanchana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}