India on Saturday delivered 40,000 tonnes of diesel to crisis-hit Sri Lanka, the island nation’s NewsWire said, quoting Ceylon Petroleum Corporation chairman Sumith Wijesinghe. NewsWire said distribution will start this evening – welcome news for hundreds of fuel stations across Sri Lanka that had no supply over the past few days.
An equal-sized consignment of rice is also being prepped, Reuters reported, and will be the first major food aid since the two countries signed a $1 billion loan deal last month. This will allow the Lankan government to bring down prices that had doubled over the past year.”We are first loading containers for prompt shipment and vessel-loading wiil start in a few days,” BV Krishna Rao, the managing director of Pattabhi Agro Foods, told Reuters.
The firm is supplying rice to Sri Lanka State Trading (General) Corp under a credit facility agreement reached between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments.
The diesel shipment is part of an additional $500 million in fuel aid for a Sri Lankan government struggling to deal with its worst crisis in decades; prices of food and essential commodities have shot up and the country ran out of petrol and diesel this week, prompting deployment of armed troops at filing stations and 13-hour electricity cuts.
