Just day’s worth of petrol left, SL PM tells nation

COLOMBO: Crisis-hit Sri Lanka was down to its last day of petrol and urgently requires foreign exchange to finance essential imports, newly elected prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Monday in an address to the nation.

“We have run out of petrol... At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day,” Wickremesinghe said, warning his bankrupt country could face more hardships in the coming months.He said the government was also unable to raise dollars to pay for three shipments of oil, with the ships awaiting outside the Colombo harbour for payments before discharging their cargoes, and needs $75 million to pay for imports.

Sri Lanka is in the throes of its worst-ever economic crisis with its 22 million people enduring severe hardships to secure food, fuel and medicines while facing record inflation and lengthy power blackouts. Wickremesinghe, an opposition parliamentarian who has held the post five times previously, assumed office on Thursday after his predecessor and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s elder son Mahinda Rajapaksa was forced out after weeks of protests against the government’s handling of the economic crisis turned deadly.

“The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives,” Wickremesinghe said. “I have no desire to hide the truth and to lie to the public.” However, he urged people to “patiently bear the next couple of months” and vowed he could overcome the crisis.

“We must prepare ourselves to make some sacrifices and face the challenges of this period.”

He said the government has also run out of cash to pay the 1.4 million civil servants their salaries in May, and he will turn to money printing as a last resort.

“Against my own wishes, I am compelled to permit printing money in order to pay state-sector employees and to pay for essential goods and services,” he said.Two shipments of petrol and two of diesel using an Indian credit line could provide relief in the next few days, he added, but the country is also facing a shortage of 14 essential medicines.

He also warned that fuel and electricity tariffs will be raised substantially and his government will also sell off its lossmaking national carrier to reduce losses.The country’s power minister Kanchana Wijesekera also urged the public “not to queue up or top up in the next three days until the 1,190 fuel station deliveries have been completed”. Sri Lanka has sought an International Monetary Fund bailout and one of the key demands of the international lender is for Colombo to divest loss-making state enterprises, including Sri Lankan Airlines whose carried-forward losses exceed a billion dollars.