{"id":125652,"date":"2022-05-24T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T22:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=125652"},"modified":"2022-05-24T15:46:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T22:46:10","slug":"exclusive-sri-lankas-prime-minister-says-he-will-slash-expenditure-in-new-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/05\/24\/exclusive-sri-lankas-prime-minister-says-he-will-slash-expenditure-in-new-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive-Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Says He Will Slash Expenditure in New Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy USNews<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Tuesday he will present an interim budget within six weeks, slashing infrastructure projects to re-route funds into a two-year relief programme for the crisis-hit island nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wickremesinghe, who took office two weeks ago, warned that inflation would rise as the government gets down to tackling the crisis, and that there could be more protests on the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he hoped any unrest would not get out of hand, adding that funds would be made available to help the most vulnerable of the country’s 22 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Looking at the hard days ahead, there has to be protest. It’s natural when people suffer, they must protest,” Wickremesinghe said in an interview at the colonial-era prime minister’s office in the commercial capital Colombo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But we want to ensure that it does not destabilise the political system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“With the interim budget, it is just about cutting down expenditure, cutting to the bone where possible and transferring it to welfare.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country located off India’s southern tip is reeling from its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, as a shortage of foreign currency severely curtailed imports of essentials including fuel and medicine, triggering months of unprecedented protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the public ire has been targeted at President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family, whom protesters blame for mishandling the economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roots of the current crisis also lie in the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated the country’s lucrative tourism industry and sapped foreign workers’ remittances, and populist tax cuts enacted by the Rajapaksa administration that drained government income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have no rupee revenue, and now we have to print another (one) trillion rupees,” Wickremesinghe said, warning that annual inflation could rocket past 40% in coming months, putting further pressure on Sri Lankan households already grappling with high prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For full report<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/world\/articles\/2022-05-24\/exclusive-sri-lankas-prime-minister-says-will-slash-expenditure-in-new-budget<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy USNews COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Tuesday he will present an interim budget within six weeks, slashing infrastructure projects to re-route funds into a two-year relief programme for the crisis-hit island nation. Wickremesinghe, who took office two weeks ago, warned that inflation would rise as the government gets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125652","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=125652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}