The Sri Lankan government announced today, Friday, that it had requested emergency assistance from the United Nations to reconstitute its stocks of basic foodstuffs, warning of the risk of famine in the country.
Sri Lanka is facing the most serious economic crisis since its independence and is suffering from shortages of fuel, food and medicine due to foreign exchange outages and inflation.
The Prime Minister’s Office said, in a statement, that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization intends to implement a “crisis plan to respond to the emergency food situation” and will provide financial assistance to the urban agriculture sector.
Sri Lanka’s rice production fell by half last year and the new season, which started last month, is suffering severely due to a shortage of fertilizers caused by a depletion of foreign currency.
Facing an unprecedented financial contraction, Sri Lanka requested assistance from the International Monetary Fund after defaulting on its $51 billion foreign debt.
Sri Lanka in May appointed its new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is also finance minister.
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