Sri Lanka has petrol stocks for a day: PM

$75 billion needed urgently to help provide the nation with essential items

Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has offered a sombre assessment of the country’s dire situation. He said about $75 billion is needed urgently to help provide the nation with essential items, but the country’s treasury is struggling to find even $1 billion.

“At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day,” he said iMonday.

“The next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives,” he said. “I have no desire to hide the truth and to lie to the public. Although these facts are unpleasant and terrifying, this is the true situation. For a short period, our future will be even more difficult than the tough times that we have passed.”

Sri Lanka’s governing party yesterday defeated a move in Parliament to urgently debate a motion that would censure President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for the nation’s worst economic crisis, which the prime minister said has left only enough petrol for one day.

It was unclear when the motion will be taken up again.

It would not legally require Rajapaksa to quit, but his refusal to do so has already roiled Sri Lanka, which is on the brink of bankruptcy.

Motion against president

M.A. Sumanthiran, a lawmaker from the opposition Tamil National Alliance, proposed that Parliament bypass the usual procedure to take up the motion against Rajapaksa urgently. But the governing party defeated the motion with a 119-68 vote.

Protesters have occupied the entrance to the president’s office for more than a month calling for Rajapaksa’s resignation. Months of rallies have led to the near-dismantling of the once-powerful ruling family, with one of the president’s brothers resigning as prime minister, and other siblings and a nephew leaving their Cabinet posts.