A week of street demonstrations against cascading woes such as power cuts and shortages of food and medicine brought a change in government last month after nine people were killed and about 300 injured in protests.
For two weeks, the government restricted supplies to essential services, such as trains, buses and the health sector, after just enough fuel for a week and fresh shipments at least two weeks away.
The prime minister's office said in a statement that a government-ordered petrol shipment would arrive on July 22, while the Lanka IOC, a unit of Indian Oil Corporation, expects a shipment of petrol and diesel around July 13.
The government is trying to secure fuel shipments at an early date. The details wouldn't be released until those are confirmed, the statement said.
Doctors, nurses and medical staff say they struggle to find enough fuel to get to work despite being designated essential workers. The government has to give us a solution, H.M. Mediwatta, secretary of one of the largest nursing unions in Sri Lanka, told reporters that this is an impossible situation. The South Asian nation's most serious economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948 comes after the COVID 19 battered the tourism-reliant economy and slashed remittances from overseas workers. Rising oil prices, populist tax cuts and a seven-month ban on the import of chemical fertilisers last year that devastated agriculture have compounded the problems. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said the World Bank has agreed to restructure 17 projects it is funding in Sri Lanka. Similar support had been extended earlier in the day to buy fuel and medicine. After negotiations with the IMF are completed, more World Bank assistance will be provided, he said on Twitter. An International Monetary Fund team is in Colombo for talks on a bailout package that could be as much as $3 billion. Sri Lanka hopes to reach a staff-level agreement by Thursday, but it is unlikely that it will bring immediate funds. A march to the president's house by a trade union of bankers, teachers, and self-employed was stopped by riot police who had thrown up barricades to guard the area. An official of a teacher's union said things had become unbearable for the common man. We want this government to go home. More than 100 medical staff at the national hospital in Colombo marched to the prime minister's office and called for the government to ensure fresh supplies of fuel and medicines. On Wednesday and Thursday, public health inspectors and other health service workers are on strike. Energy prices are causing a lot of chaos in Asia. The island of 22 million has run out of useable foreign exchange reserves to import essentials such as food, medicine, petrol and diesel. As the crisis grows, many people are being arrested trying to escape the country by boat. The government is looking abroad for help, to countries from the Middle East to Russia on Tuesday, in a bid to secure fuel, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera met Qatar's minister of state for energy affairs and chief executive of Qatar Energy. He is looking for a line of credit from a Qatar development fund. Another Sri Lankan minister will travel to Russia on the weekend in search of energy deals.