World Desk, AnyTV, Colombo
Published by: Gaurav Pandey
Updated Tue, 01 Mar 2022 10:48 PM IST
Summary
People in Sri Lanka who do not have the ability to spend $3.20 a day, the World Bank considers them below the poverty line. According to his estimate, now 25 lakh 60 thousand people have reached below this line in Sri Lanka.
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Expansion
The website Nikkeasia.com has said in a report that frustration is spreading in Sri Lanka’s agriculture sector. Whereas out of two crore 20 lakh population of the country, one crore 60 lakh people are dependent on agriculture. According to experts, the policies of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa are directly responsible for this condition.
The President had banned the use of chemical fertilizers in April last year. He asked the farmers to use organic fertilisers. But when this policy had a bad result, last November they suddenly changed the policy. Then he promised to provide free chemical fertilizers to the farmers.
Budhi Marambe, Professor of Crop Science at Sri Lanka’s Peradiniya University, said farmers typically keep 35 per cent of their produce for use as seed in the next season. In such a situation, the result of a bad crop this time will be that less rice will reach the market than the actual yield.
Sri Lanka has seen a sharp rise in the price of food grains in many cities. People are also facing the shortage of many food items. In December this year, the price of tomatoes had touched Rs 463 per kg. Whereas a year before that, this price was Rs 149 per kg. The overall inflation rate in December was 20 per cent, which rose to 24.4 per cent in January this year. Although it fell to 16.8 per cent in February, Sri Lanka has the highest inflation rate in the whole of South Asia after Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has warned the Sri Lankan government that the growing economic difficulties in the country could result in social unrest. Sri Lanka-based World Bank country director Faris Hadad Jervos told the website Nikkai Asia – Since 2002, Sri Lanka had made good progress in reducing poverty. But now it has increased and 11.7 percent of the country’s population is now living below the poverty line.
Sirimal Abairatne, Professor of Economics at Colombo University, has said – ‘This country has never seen so many types of crises at once. When the first economic crisis came, there was no shortage of foreign exchange. So we could take foreign loans. Now the foreign debt has become so high that the creditworthiness of Sri Lanka is in danger.