{"id":124721,"date":"2022-04-25T15:28:44","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T22:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=124721"},"modified":"2022-04-25T15:28:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T22:28:44","slug":"sri-lanka-exchange-halts-again-after-13-per-cent-plunge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/04\/25\/sri-lanka-exchange-halts-again-after-13-per-cent-plunge\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka exchange halts again after 13 per cent plunge"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy https:\/\/borneobulletin.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>April 26, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO (AFP) \u2013 Crisis-hit Sri Lanka\u2019s stock exchange halted again yesterday after a nearly 13 per cent plunge, derailing the bourse\u2019s tentative re-opening after a two-week break aimed at forestalling a market collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The island nation is grappling with its worst economic downturn since independence in 1948, with months of regular blackouts and acute shortages of food and fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Equities have shed nearly 40 per cent of their value since January, with the local currency falling by a similar amount against the greenback in the past month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday was the first morning of trade on the Colombo bourse since a weeklong Sri Lankan New Year holiday and a subsequent five-day trading halt after the government hiked interest rates and defaulted on its USD51 billion foreign debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The local S&amp;P index fell seven per cent in the opening minute of trade, more than the five per cent needed to trigger an automatic half-hour halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shares continued their rapid slide after a brief resumption, prompting the market to declare a halt to trading for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lankan officials were in Washington last week to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout, but official sources said there was no immediate prospect of emergency funding from the lender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Colombo is now banking on further bilateral help from India, China and Japan to help keep the country afloat, a Finance Ministry source told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy https:\/\/borneobulletin.com April 26, 2022 COLOMBO (AFP) \u2013 Crisis-hit Sri Lanka\u2019s stock exchange halted again yesterday after a nearly 13 per cent plunge, derailing the bourse\u2019s tentative re-opening after a two-week break aimed at forestalling a market collapse. The island nation is grappling with its worst economic downturn since independence in 1948, with months of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}