Sri Lanka has only enough petrol for one day and urgently needs $75 million in foreign exchange to pay for essential imports within the next couple of days, the country’s new prime minister said on Monday.
“At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in a televised address.
Wickremesinghe said that three shipments of crude oil and furnace oil “have been anchored within the maritime zone of Sri Lanka” because the government was unable to raise dollars to pay for them.
“At 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,” he said.
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