{"id":125621,"date":"2022-05-23T15:06:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T22:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=125621"},"modified":"2022-05-23T15:06:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T22:06:41","slug":"inflation-in-crisis-hit-sri-lanka-hits-new-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/05\/23\/inflation-in-crisis-hit-sri-lanka-hits-new-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflation in crisis-hit Sri Lanka hits new record"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy MailOnLine<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2022\/05\/23\/13\/wire-58173631-1653309366-867_634x421.jpg\" height=\"421\" width=\"634\" alt=\"A woman sits beside liquefied petroleum gas cylinders on a street in Colombo. Fuel is in short supply across Sri Lanka\">+1View gallery<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A woman sits beside liquefied petroleum gas cylinders on a street in Colombo. Fuel is in short supply across Sri Lanka<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka&#8217;s inflation hit a seventh consecutive record high in April as a petrol shortage worsened and food prices rose sharply, official data showed Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The National Consumer Price Index rose 33.8 percent year-on-year in April, more than six times the 5.5 percent inflation of a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Annual food inflation stood at 45.1 percent, according to the latest data released by the Department of Census and Statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hammered by a foreign exchange crisis, the country&#8217;s 22 million people have been enduring acute shortages of essentials &#8212; including food and medicines &#8212; for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Protests are continuing outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa&#8217;s office demanding his resignation over the unprecedented economic turmoil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inflation is likely to rise further in May as fuel price hikes of 35 percent for petrol and 65 percent for diesel &#8212; commonly used in public transport &#8212; feed into the wider economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Petrol remains in short supply with long queues outside the few pumping stations still distributing the fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka asked the International Monetary Fund last month for emergency assistance. The country has defaulted on its $51 billion external debt and is seeking international aid to revive the bankrupt economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The economy has collapsed since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with a nosedive in tourism revenues and foreign worker remittances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy MailOnLine +1View gallery A woman sits beside liquefied petroleum gas cylinders on a street in Colombo. Fuel is in short supply across Sri Lanka Sri Lanka&#8217;s inflation hit a seventh consecutive record high in April as a petrol shortage worsened and food prices rose sharply, official data showed Monday. The National Consumer Price Index [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125621","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=125621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}