BSS :
Bankrupt Sri Lanka’s economy shrank 8.4 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, official data showed Thursday, as the island nation’s unprecedented financial crisis reached its peak.
Months of acute food, fuel and medicine shortages, extended blackouts and runaway inflation have plagued the country after it ran out of dollars to finance even the most essential imports.
Sri Lanka has defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt and in July angry protesters stormed the home of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with the leader subsequently fleeing the island before resigning.
Industrial output fell by 10 percent in the June quarter while the agricultural sector contracted by 8.4 percent, according to Sri Lanka’s statistics department.
Thursday’s figures follow a 1.6 percent contraction in the first quarter with the economy already weakened in 2021 by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
