COLOMBO —
Crisis-hit Sri Lanka announced
weekly fuel quotas for motorists on Sunday, as an acute shortage worsened, and
longer queues formed outside the few pumping stations still operating.
اضافة اعلان
Energy minister Kanchana Wijesekera said the
state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation was struggling to finance oil imports,
while consumption had shot up due to shortages of electricity and liquefied
petroleum gas.
“We have no choice but to register consumers at
filling stations and give them a guaranteed weekly quota until we are able to
strengthen the financial situation,” the minister said. “I hope to have this
system in place by the first week of July.” He did not say how much fuel
motorists will be allowed to buy under the new system.
Sri Lanka has been struggling with its worst
economic crisis in decades, In mid-April, the government ordered all fuel
stations not to pump more than four liters of petrol for a motorcycle, five for
a three-wheeler and 19.5 liters of gasoline or diesel for cars and SUVs. Under that system, many motorists would top
up, drain fuel into cans to build a buffer stock, and then return to the queue
for more.
This week, queues at fuel stations had become
longer, with hundreds of cars and thousands of motorcycles waiting in line,
sometimes for days.
Two weeks ago, Sri Lanka received a shipment of
Russian crude oil to be refined on the island, but the finished product from
the Sapugaskanda refinery was less than a tenth of the country’s daily
requirement. Around 90,000 tonnes of Siberian light crude was sent to
Sri Lanka’s lone refinery after the shipment was acquired on credit from
Dubai-based intermediary Coral Energy last month.
The Sri Lankan government has also approached
Moscow’s envoy in Colombo to help secure direct supplies of Russian oil, Energy
Minister Wijesekera said.
Sri Lanka defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt
in mid-April and has since opened talks with the IMF for a bailout. The UN has
issued an appeal for $47 million to buy essential food for 1.7 million Sri
Lankans in the next four months.
The worst economic crisis since the country gained
independence in 1948 has sparked widespread protests calling for
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down. He has refused, and instead got his brother
Mahinda to step down as prime minister on May 9.
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