Ranil Wickremesinghe has suddenly been promoted from being Sri Lanka's prime minister to its new interim president - but how long he lasts in that job is an open question.
Colombo: Sri Lankan cricketer Chamika Karunaratne waits in a long queue at the fuel station to fill up his car after two days. A young international cricketer who made his international debut in 2019 is now upset by the recent crisis in the country.
Traditional debt crisis signs of crashing currencies, 1,000 basis point bond spreads and burned FX reserves point to a record number of developing nations now in trouble.
Sri Lanka has not reached any initial agreement with the IMF on debt relief, and its largest creditors -the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank - are urged to come up with a package that would speed up its debt restructuring process, Sri Lanka's Ambassador to China Palitha Kohona told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Friday, while also calling for more assistance from partners after the debt-ridden country claimed bankruptcy and imposed a state of emergency amid escalating protests and persisting shortage of daily necessities.
Sri Lanka is now facing a hyperinflationary situation with the country’s inflation hitting a new high of 54.6 per cent in June, several leading economists said referring to the Central Bank’s latest announcement of the official economic indicator data.