ABSTRACT
2022 has brought many shocks and surprises to the world. Even as nations across the globe were recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine causing a devastating geopolitical turmoil. Closer home in South Asia, Pakistan faced a political setback and elected a new prime minister, while Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in more than 70 years. In fact, Sri Lanka's economic woes are not new. The crisis has been festering for years, until it started unraveling in the beginning of 2022. The ensuing chaos has deeply affected its citizens, which ultimately led to political turmoil and violence. It is difficult to predict the future state of affairs in the island nation, since a new political regime has recently taken charge. This paper aims to extensively analyze the economic crisis, mainly focusing on the reasons for the sad state of affairs, such as mismanagement by successive governments and ill-timed economic and trade policies, including China's investment fallout.
ABSTRACT
The war in Ukraine only served to worsen the situation as Russia is Sri Lanka’s third biggest export market for tea and, together with Ukraine, are major sources of tourist arrivals. <span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block;width: 0px;overflow: hidden;line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span> In April, the Rajapaksa government announced that it would default on payment to creditors totalling a staggering US$51 billion and begin a loan restructuring process. Vithanage, who is doing research on chronic kidney disease that affects farmers in remote rural areas, says it has become prohibitively expensive to do basic work, such as collecting water samples and talking to patients. “Initially, we cooked at our boarding house, but now we are forced to buy food from outside due to shortage of gas, but buying food outside is costly as prices doubled over a year,” says Madushika Sewwandi, a chemical technology graduate student from Matara, a town in southern Sri Lanka.