Calls for government to go over cash crisis

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s stock market halted trading after a nearly 13% plunge yesterday as the government faces new pressure to resign from influential Buddhist leaders over a crippling economic crisis.

The country’s worst downturn since independence in 1948 has brought months of regular blackouts and acute shortages of food and fuel.

The market crash came as the country’s most influential Buddhist clerics joined a growing list of former allies calling for the government’s resignation. Sri Lanka last week negotiated with the International Monetary Fund, but with no immediate prospect of funding. It is now banking on help from India, China and Japan.