Sri Lanka’s newly appointed prime minister has said that the cash-strapped island nation has run out of petrol stock, as he said the country of 22 million people desperately needed to secure $75m in foreign exchange in the next few days to pay for essential imports, including medicine.
“We have run out of petrol … At the moment, we only have petrol stocks for a single day” Ranil Wickremesinghe said as marauding gangs roam the island nation attacking the wealthy and fighting for petrol in scenes akin to Mad Max.
He said the government was also unable to raise dollars to pay for three shipments of oil, with the ships awaiting outside the Colombo harbour for payments before discharging their cargoes.
Sri Lanka is in real chaos. Hungry residents are literally preying on wealthy residents and officials, burning their homes and cars. The police open fire to kill. More than 200 people have already been killed. pic.twitter.com/SBdXTsXpnE
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 16, 2022
Wickremesinghe took office on Thursday after his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa was forced out after weeks of protests over the government’s handling of the economic crisis turned deadly.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa replaced Mahinda, his elder brother, with Wickremesinghe, an opposition parliamentarian who has held the post five times previously, in a desperate bid to placate protesters.
The crisis led to widespread protests against President Rajapaksa and his family, culminating in the resignation of Mahinda as prime minister last week following deadly violence.
But protesters have rejected the appointment of Wickremesinghe as prime minister and continue to demand the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The protesters and experts have accused the Rajapaksas of economic mismanagement leading to the crisis.
Despite acknowledging the harsh time ahead, the new leader urged people to “patiently bear the next couple of months” and vowed he could overcome the crisis.
He said the government had also run out of cash to pay 1.4 million civil servants their salaries in May, and he will turn to money printing as a last resort.
https://twitter.com/danialonpri/status/1525322875640680448
“Against my own wishes, I am compelled to permit printing money in order to pay state-sector employees and to pay for essential goods and services,” he said.
He also warned that fuel and electricity tariffs will be raised substantially and his government will also sell off its revenue-losing national carrier to reduce losses.
In April 2021, the Rajapaksa government announced a bold and aspirational transition to organic farming. Chemical fertilisers were banned and their import halted. Virtually overnight, farmers were left to get on with farming in an organic way.
“There was no proper plan, no training or education,” Vimukthi de Silva, an organic farmer in Rajanganaya said. Yields of rice, the country’s staple food, dropped precipitously, as did formerly plentiful banana and tea crops. Vegetables became five times as expensive as before the ban.
Likewise the global lockdowns saw tourism on the island collapse as well as the ability for locals to work abroad meaning that no hard currencies were being brought on and therefore being unable to pay in dollars for oil etc. Could this all happen in the UK and Europe? You cannot rule it out!
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