Sri Lanka: No medicines, 10-hour power cuts as economic crisis worsens

Sri Lanka’s government extended the duration of daily electricity outages to 10 hours, refiners advised citizens not to queue at fuel stations as diesel runs out, and state-run hospitals don’t have enough life-saving medicines as the nation’s foreign-currency shortage spirals into a worsening humanitarian crisis.

“This is a sad day,” Morning newspaper cited Janaka Ratnayake, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka, as telling reporters in Colombo Tuesday after increasing the power cuts from seven hours a day. 

Ceylon Petroleum requested the public not to queue for diesel on Wednesday and Thursday after the state-run refiner failed to unload a shipment of 37,500 metric tonnes of the fuel. Agence France-Presse interviewed doctors and health workers who spoke of dire shortages of vital drugs and diagnostic chemicals that are imported into the island nation. Sri Lanka, whose trade deficit doubled to $1.1 billion in December, had about $2.3 billion of foreign-exchange reserves last month and faces a $1 billion dollar bond repayment in July. Authorities have devalued the local currency, curbed imports and raised fuel prices and interest rates in a bid to control the spiraling crisis. 

Stock trading was briefly halted for the second straight day Wednesday after a key index plunged 5 per cent. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa this month dropped resistance to a loan from the International Monetary Fund.