Sri Lanka, in default of payment, announced Friday to impose restrictions on fuel, at a time when its president is facing strong popular protest due to the worst economic crisis in the history of the island.
The state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), which accounts for two-thirds of the retail fuel market in Sri Lanka, has announced that it will limit the quantities motorists can buy and prohibit individuals from filling cans at storage purposes.
The maximum filling allowed has been set at four liters of petrol for two wheels, and five liters for three wheels. With regard to individual cars or vans, the limit has been set at 19.5 liters of gasoline or diesel, detailed CPC.
The energy ministry said it expected a similar move from Lanka IOC, the other major fuel distributor which accounts for a third of the Sri Lankan market.
On Friday, most gas stations were already out of gas anyway, while the few stations still open saw long queues.
The country’s main cooking gas supplier, Litro Gas, meanwhile said it was completely out of stock, but hoped to secure new supplies by Monday to resume distribution.
Sri Lanka, which has been in the grip of its worst economic crisis for several weeks since its independence in 1948, defaulted on its foreign debt on Tuesday.
This crisis is due to the Covid-19 pandemic which deprived this South Asian island of its tourist bonanza, but it was worsened by a series of bad political decisions, according to economists.
And the 22 million inhabitants of the country are now suffering from shortages of essential goods (food, fuel, medicines), long daily power cuts and record inflation.
To redress the situation, the government imposed a broad ban on imports to preserve its foreign exchange reserves and use them for debt servicing.
But since the end of March, the population’s frustration with the government has spread widely and the country has been rocked since the end of March by demonstrations demanding the departure of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
