As an island country with a population of 22 million, Sri Lanka, which owes US$51 billion in foreign debt, is rapidly heading for bankruptcy. The national treasury is so depleted that it has almost no money to import daily necessities such as gasoline, milk, gas and toilet paper. Families with no fuel or food worries are now having to find ways to solve the problem of three meals a day, and reducing the amount of meals is one of them. People lined up to buy the desperately short supply of fuel. A crisis has jeopardized years of progress in a country with a relatively comfortable way of life that the entire South Asian region has admired. Before the disaster, 27-year-old accountant Madushanka was studying in Japan, where he intended to stay and work.
In 2018, when his father died, he hurried back to China to take care of his mother and sister. Madushanka completed her studies at home and found a banner design job in the tourism industry. Clinker, a serious terrorist attack in 2019 cost him his job quickly. The terrorist attack has severely impacted the country's society and economy. The next job I finally found was ruined by the outbreak of the COVID-19 (serious special infectious pneumonia, new coronary pneumonia, Wuhan pneumonia) pandemic. Now, he works for a management company, his fourth job in four years. However, at present, despite having a reliable salary, he can barely support his family.
Food prices have tripled in recent weeks, forcing the family to seek government rations of rice and donations from nearby Buddhist temples and mosques. Madushanka's savings have run out. "Right now, it's barely enough to survive, and if we don't get extra help for a few months, we're going to have a hard time," he said. PM: Economy has 'completely collapsed' Experts point out that even past crises, such as Sri Lanka's nearly 30-year civil war that ended in 2009 or the devastating tsunami in 2004, have not brought this level of pain and suffering to people outside the region concerned. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on June 22 that the economy had "completely collapsed". Until recently, experts estimated that Sri Lanka's middle class, who made up 15 to 20 percent of the urban population, generally enjoyed economic security and comfort. Bhavani Fonseka, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Policy Options in Colombo.