{"id":99898,"date":"2020-03-13T15:59:31","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T22:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=99898"},"modified":"2020-03-13T16:00:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T23:00:13","slug":"sri-lankan-economy-facing-short-term-challenges-from-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/03\/13\/sri-lankan-economy-facing-short-term-challenges-from-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan economy facing short-term challenges from COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Shiran Illanperuma Xinhua<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The island nation is facing the temporary loss of markets in the US and Europe, says Atchuthan Srirangan of First Capital Holdings<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>COLOMBO, March 13 (Xinhua) \u2014 The Sri Lankan economy may experience external shocks due to the COVID-19 outbreak, with tourism, garment manufacturing, and tea exports to be the hardest hit, a local expert said here Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Atchuthan Srirangan, Assistant Manager \u2013 Research for Investments at investment management company First Capital Holdings, said that the Colombo Stock Exchange this week had dropped at a similar pace as foreign markets, partially fueled by fears caused by COVID-19.<ins><\/ins><ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These external shocks are reflected in the Sri Lankan market. We have been seeing foreign sell-offs the whole year in companies related to tourism, garments, and banks,\u201d Srirangan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s tourism sector and garment exports would face challenges due to their reliance on western markets, and reduction of demand in Europe and North America, Srirangan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Travel restrictions have put the tourism sector\u2019s earnings on a downward trend, therefore the stock price of some major companies may see a drop,\u201d Srirangan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bright side for the tourism sector is that the off-season begins this month, so the worse damage should be behind us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s tea exports may also face challenges due to the reduction of global oil prices which may reduce the foreign currency earning of major Sri Lankan tea importers in the Middle East, Srirangan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a positive note, Srirangan assessed that China is on track to make a full economic recovery, providing space for other countries to follow suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Countries such as China and Singapore took swift action which may have had short-term economic impacts but allowed swift recovery,\u201d Srirangan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s decision to temporarily close schools and quarantine visitors coming from COVID-19 affected countries will hopefully have a positive effect,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Shiran Illanperuma Xinhua The island nation is facing the temporary loss of markets in the US and Europe, says Atchuthan Srirangan of First Capital Holdings COLOMBO, March 13 (Xinhua) \u2014 The Sri Lankan economy may experience external shocks due to the COVID-19 outbreak, with tourism, garment manufacturing, and tea exports to be the hardest [&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-99898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99898","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=99898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}