As Sri Lanka goes through a severe economic crisis, India is providing fuel to Colombo so that it can meet some of its immediate needs and help stabilise its domestic economy.
In the past 24 hours, at total of 76,000 tonnes of fuel were delivered to Sri Lanka and the total supply of fuel under Indian assistance now stands at more than 2,70,000 tonnes.
#Indian credit line for fuel at work!!! One consignment each of 36,000 MT petrol and 40,000 MT diesel was delivered to #SriLanka in the last 24 hours. Total supply of various types of fuel under Indian assistance now stands at more than 270,000 MT. pic.twitter.com/QMO8fftnXA
— India in Sri Lanka (@IndiainSL) April 6, 2022
Sri Lanka has been plunged into political turmoil, with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa under pressure to resign as protests escalate over an economic crisis.
The island nation of 22 million people is experiencing acute shortages of food, fuel and other essentials — along with record inflation and crippling power cuts — which have inflicted widespread misery in the most painful downturn since independence from Britain in 1948.
The South Asian country, which emerged from a devastating civil war in 2009 only to be rocked by Islamist bombings in 2019, has also been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which torpedoed its vital tourism sector.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dealt a new blow to the tourism industry as the two European countries represented Sri Lanka’s first and third biggest sources of visitors in January.
With inputs from NDTV
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