Cash-strapped Sri Lanka announced a two-week halt to all fuel sales except for essential services on Monday and appealed to the private sector to let employees work from home after running out of supplies.
“From midnight today, no fuel will be sold except for essential services like the health sector, because we want to conserve the little reserves we have,” government spokesman Bandula Gunawardana said.
Earlier, the Sri Lankan government on Monday announced that only essential services will operate from midnight till July 10 and all other operations will be temporarily suspended as the crisis-hit nation faces acute fuel shortage.
The move came days after Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday last said that the debt-laden economy of the island nation has “collapsed” after months of shortages of food, fuel and electricity, and cannot even purchase imported oil.
The government fuel stockpile stands at about 9,000 tonnes of diesel and 6,000 tonnes of petrol, the power minister said on Sunday.
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Sri Lanka’s power regulator said the country was using its last stocks of furnace oil to run multiple thermal power plants and keep power cuts to a minimum. Scheduled power cuts will rise to three hours from Monday from two and a half hours earlier.
The price of diesel is retailing at 460 Lankan rupee and petrol retailing at 550 per litre.
There is no clarity on new shipments of oil, the Sri Lankan energy minister has confirmed and urged citizens not to queue up at fuel stations. A shipment was supposed to arrive, but suppliers have expressed their inability to deliver, citing non-commitment of payments and logistic issues. No further shipments have been scheduled as the country has run out of dollars.
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