Sri Lanka is facing an acute crisis of petrol and diesel. It has run out of diesel, and big power plants have been closed consequently. And 13 hours of load shedding is happening in a day. The situation is so bad that even street lights have been switched off there. Moreover, surgeries in hospitals have also been stopped. There are long lines for medicines and food items, leading to riots at many places.


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In today's DNA, Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary analysed the economic crisis in Sri Lanka and how it is leading to riots at many places in the country.


What we need to understand today is that Sri Lanka, a country with a population of 2.25 crore, is not able to provide petrol and diesel to its people. But despite having a population of 140 crore, in India, we don’t have to stand in queue anywhere for petrol and diesel. In fact, Russia has now agreed to sell crude oil to India at low prices. Countries like the US are very angry with this deal between India and Russia. 


Today, the Foreign Minister of Russia met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which is a big message for the whole world. But on the other hand, Pakistan turned out to be such a weak country that the government there got entangled in a political crisis after Imran Khan visited Russia.


Sri Lanka is finding itself in such a situation because its foreign reserve has fallen by 70 percent in the last two years. And at present, Sri Lanka has only 2.31 billion dollars, i.e., only 17.5 thousand crore rupees left in the form of foreign currency. Whereas its one-year expenditure on import of crude oil and other things is Rs 91 thousand crore. 


In short, Sri Lanka's pocket is empty. And now it neither has money left to buy crude oil nor it is able to import gas and other things. And as a result, the prices of many things including petrol, diesel and LPG have increased manifold in Sri Lanka.