{"id":62679,"date":"2022-05-18T07:28:27","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T12:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62679"},"modified":"2022-05-18T07:33:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T12:33:23","slug":"62679","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62679","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka Out of Gasoline, \u2018Difficult\u2019 Months Ahead, Prime Minister Says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Sri<\/a><\/div>\n
Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe (C), visits a Buddhist temple after his swearing in ceremony in Colombo on May 12, 2022. (Ishara S. Kodikara\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sri Lanka Out of Gasoline, \u2018Difficult\u2019 Months Ahead, Prime Minister Says<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Sri Lanka<\/a>\u00a0has run out of gasoline and\u00a0the country\u2019s finances are \u201cextremely precarious,\u201d its new prime minister said on May 16.<\/p>\n

The cash-strapped government urgently needs $75 million in foreign exchange to pay for essential imports within the next couple of days,\u00a0Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt present, the Sri Lankan economy is extremely precarious,\u201d Wickremesinghe said in a\u00a0televised address<\/a>. \u201cThe next couple of months will be the most difficult ones of our lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must prepare ourselves to make some sacrifices and face the challenges of this period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wickremesinghe said that three shipments of crude oil and furnace oil \u201chave been anchored within the maritime zone of Sri Lanka\u201d because the government was unable to raise dollars to pay for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt present, the central bank, local and private banks, and foreign banks functioning in Sri Lanka are all facing a dollar shortage. As [the public] is already aware, we possess a very low amount of U.S. dollars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While shipments of diesel and gasoline using the Indian credit line may provide relief in the coming days, Wickremesinghe warned that Sri Lanka could see power outages lasting up to 15 hours a day.<\/p>\n

The country also faces a severe shortage of medicines and surgical equipment, particularly heart disease medication and anti-rabies vaccine. Sri Lanka currently owes 34 billion Sri Lankan rupees ($94 million) to pharmaceutical suppliers.<\/p>\n

The central bank will have to print money to pay the wages of the state-sector employees, although\u00a0Wickremesinghe cautioned that doing so would cause the currency to depreciate.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe (C), visits a Buddhist temple after his swearing in ceremony in Colombo on May 12, 2022. (Ishara S. Kodikara\/AFP via Getty Images) Sri Lanka Out of Gasoline, \u2018Difficult\u2019 Months Ahead, Prime Minister Says Sri Lanka\u00a0has run out of gasoline and\u00a0the country\u2019s finances are \u201cextremely precarious,\u201d its new prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[32900,3378,31222,32899,2207,16350,4318],"class_list":["post-62679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-survival-2","tag-aldgra-fedly","tag-gasoline","tag-gasoline-shortage","tag-gasoline-supplies","tag-sri-lanka","tag-the-epoch-times","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62681,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62679\/revisions\/62681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}