Sri Lanka is struggling to secure fresh fuel supplies, a top government minister said on Sunday, as the crisis-hit country of 22 million people is down to just 15,000 tons of petrol and diesel to keep essential services running in the coming days.
"We are struggling to find suppliers. They are reluctant to accept letters of credit from our banks. There are over $700 million in overdue payments so now suppliers want advance payments," Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera told reporters.
The government on Sunday announced sending ministers to Russia and Qatar to try and secure cheap oil, alongside extending a two-week closure of non-essential state institutions until further notice in order to save fuel, maintaining only a skeleton staff to provide minimum services.
Wijesekera said two ministers will travel to Russia on Monday to discuss getting more oil following last month's purchase of 90,000 tonnes of Siberian crude.
That shipment was arranged through Coral Energy, a Dubai-based intermediary, but politicians have been urging the authorities to negotiate directly with President Vladimir Putin's government.
Wijesekera had announced on Saturday that Sri Lanka was virtually out of petrol and diesel after several scheduled shipments were delayed indefinitely due to "banking" reasons.
Fuel reserves were sufficient to meet less than two days' demand and it was being reserved for essential services, Wijesekera said while apologising for the situation.
Unable to repay its $51 billion foreign debt, the government declared it was defaulting in April and is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a possible bailout.
In the past two months Sri Lanka largely received fuel via a $500 million Indian credit line, which ran out in mid-June. A petrol shipment due last Thursday failed to arrive and no fresh shipments are yet scheduled, Wijesekera said.
"We have about 9,000 metric tons of diesel and 6,000 metric tons of petrol left. We are doing everything we can to get new stocks but we don't know when that will be."
However, Sri Lanka also implemented a 12%-22% fuel price increase in the early hours of Sunday. A price hike in May pushed inflation to 45.3%, the highest since 2015.
Separately, the government yesterday asked about one million public employees to work from home until further notice.
A top delegation from the US Treasury and State Departments arrived in Colombo for a three-day visit on Sunday to assess the situation. A team from the IMF is already in Sri Lanka for talks on a possible $3 billion bailout package.
