Tourism accounts for about 5 per cent of Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with Britain, India and China being the main markets.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka, a popular destination for holidaymakers, should be teeming with tourists at this time of year.

Instead, an unprecedented economic crisis and political turmoil have all but wreaked its tourism with about 40 per cent of the pre-bookings being cancelled recently.

Tourism accounts for about 5 per cent of Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with Britain, India and China being the main markets.

Sri Lanka is facing its worst foreign exchange crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the island nation’s earnings from tourism and remittances.

According to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), the number of tourist arrivals decreased by 60 per cent in June.

Director General of SLTDA Dhammika Wijesinghe said the situation had arisen due to the unprecedented economic crisis.

As per SLTDA data, 106,500 tourists arrived in March 2022, but the number dwindled to 32,856 in June.

Wijesinghe said July and August are the best months for tourism in Sri Lanka.

“During those two months, tourists mainly visit the East.

They also tend to visit Kandy in August for the perahera (a Buddhist festival).

However, given the fuel shortages travelling in Sri Lanka is a difficult task.

About 40 per cent of the pre-bookings have been canceled by foreign tourists,” he said.

Tourist coach operators claim that they were forced to drastically increase their fares due to the prevailing fuel shortage which has adversely affected tourism because those who visit Sri Lanka informed others of the situation in the country.

Namalsiri Kottawa, a tourist coach operator, told the ‘The Island’ newspaper that tourists could not even find their way from the hotel to the nearest town.

“The minister of energy says that fuel is available to tourist coaches.

However, it is not so.

Either you spend a week at a gas station to get 15 to 20 litres of fuel or you buy from the black market.

Both are not viable options,” he was quoted as saying in the report on Friday.

A series of back-to-back crises over the last few years, including the coronavirus pandemic and the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks, has brought Sri Lanka’s tourist-dependent economy to a halt as the country shut its borders and imposed lockdowns and curfews.

Tourism earned Sri Lanka USD 4.4 billion and contributed 5.6 per cent to GDP in 2018, but this dropped to just 0.8 per cent in 2020.

The government was left with a large deficit.

Sri Lanka fell back on its foreign exchange reserves to pay off government debt, shrinking its reserves from USD 6.9 billion in 2018 to USD 2.2 billion this year, according to an IMF briefing.

“Our economy has faced a complete collapse,” Prime Minister Raniil Wickremesinghe told Sri Lanka’s Parliament last month, adding the government was seeking help from its global partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stabilise the economy.

This year, Sri Lankans have been grappling with long power cuts, shortages of fuel and gas and soaring prices of food.

The government imposed curfews and declared a state of emergency in April, and again in May and July amid unrest over the economic crisis.

The country of 22 million people is facing an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, leaving millions struggling to buy food, medicine, fuel and other essentials.

Schools have been suspended and fuel has been limited to essential services.

Patients are unable to travel to hospitals due to the fuel shortage and food prices are soaring.

Trains have reduced in frequency, forcing travelers to squeeze into compartments and even sit precariously on top of them as they commute to work.

In several major cities, including Colombo, hundreds are forced to stand in line for hours to buy fuel, sometimes clashing with police and the military as they wait.

The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.

Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.

Rajapaksa, whose whereabouts are not known since Friday, was blocked from departing Sri Lanka on Monday after refusing to join a public queue at the Colombo airport in order to have his passport checked by immigration, CNN reported, citing a high-ranking military source.

It said Rajapaksa’s aides arrived at the airport with 15 passports belonging to the president and members of his family – including First Lady Ioma Rajapaksa – who had booked seats on a Sri Lankan Airlines flight leaving for Dubai at 6:25 p.m. local time on Monday, according to the military source.

Immigration officers declined to process the passports given to them by presidential aides, as Rajapaksa and his family were not physically present for cross-checks and, eventually, the flight departed without the president and his family on board, the source added.

Earlier, Rajapaksa’s younger brother and ex-finance minister Basil Rajapaksa tried to leave Sri Lanka but was stopped by immigration officials at the airport.

Basil, the 71-year-old leader who is being widely held responsible for the country’s worst economic crisis which has heaped misery on the people, tried to leave the country on Monday night through the VIP terminal of Colombo airport.

The Sri Lanka Immigration and Emigration Officers Association said the immigration officials objected to serving him at the VIP clearance line and even the passengers of the Emirates flight to Dubai had objected to his leaving.

Basil, a US passport holder, resigned as finance minister in early April as street protests intensified against shortages of fuel, food and other necessities and quit his seat in parliament in June.

Hours later, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking an interim order restraining former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and other influential officials of the Rajapaksa regime from fleeing the country without the prior approval of the apex court.

The petitioners also sought an order to take legal action against those responsible for financial irregularities and mismanagement of the Lankan economy, news portal dailymirror.lk reported.

Besides Mahinda, the petition urged travel restrictions on Basil, former Central Bank governors Ajith Nivard Cabraal and W D Lakshman, and former finance secretary S R Atygalle.

The employees of Sri Lankan Airlines withdrew from their duties from noon in a bid to prevent responsible officials involved in the country’s present crisis from leaving, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported.

President Rajapaksa has informed both Speaker of Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he will resign on July 13, days after protesters stormed his official residence in rage over the island nation’s worst economic crisis.

Speaker Abeywardena is expected to publicly announce President Rajapaksa’s resignation to the nation on Wednesday.

The Sri Lanka Air Force on Tuesday rejected reports that President Rajapaksa was currently staying at a private house belonging to its chief Air Marshal Sudarshana Pathirana, describing it as “propaganda” to tarnish the force’s image.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s political parties have stepped up efforts to form an all-party government and subsequently elect a new President on July 20 to prevent the bankrupt nation sliding further into anarchy.

A meeting was held between the main opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and former president Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Parties have begun campaigning for the support of possible candidates.

The SJB said they will campaign for the appointment of Sajith Premadasa as the interim President.

Premadasa said on Monday that his party was ready to lead the country at the presidential and prime ministerial level and develop the economy.

Under the Sri Lankan Constitution, if both the president and prime minister resign, the Speaker of parliament will serve as acting president for a maximum of 30 days.

The Parliament will elect a new president within 30 days from one of its members, who will hold the office for the remaining two years of the current term.

The political uncertainty prevails in Sri Lanka where the distribution of cooking gas has resumed alongside the delivery of fuel to retailers by the Indian Oil Company after a stoppage on Sunday.

Long queues are still seen at fuel pumps.

The price of a 450 gram loaf of bread will be hiked by Rs 20 from midnight Wednesday while other bakery items will see a price increase of Rs 10 in crisis-hit Sri Lanka due to a spike in the cost of wheat flour.

The protesters continue to occupy the three main buildings in the capital, the President’s House, the presidential secretariat and the prime minister’s official residence, Temple Trees, calling for their resignations.

The sites have been opened for public thronging the residences since Saturday to find out as to what lies behind the most protected places in the country.

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, leaving millions struggling to buy food, medicine, fuel and other essentials.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe last week said Sri Lanka is bankrupt.

The Sri Lankan government has confirmed that the urea imported from India is suitable for paddy cultivation and other crops, according to a media report on Tuesday, amidst indications that the crisis-hit country may encounter a food shortage by mid-August.

Sri Lanka on Sunday received 44,000 metric tonnes of urea, the first consignment of 65,000 MT urea to be provided under the Indian loan assistance programme as part of New Delhi’s ongoing efforts to support the country’s farmers and help bolster bilateral cooperation for food security.

The samples of the urea were sent to a local laboratory and the National Fertiliser Secretariat received the report on the biuret content of the fertiliser on Monday afternoon, the Ministry of Agriculture said as quoted by Internet newspaper colombopage.com.

According to news portal newsfirst.lk, the Fertiliser Secretariat has confirmed that the urea imported from India is suitable for Sri Lanka’s paddy cultivation and other crops.

The government report states that the biurate percentage of the urea is 0.9 per cent.

Previously, three international laboratory reports were obtained regarding the fertiliser and those reports stated that the percentage of biurate is 0.65 per cent, it said.

Generally, the biurate percentage of urea used in Sri Lanka is 1 per cent.

Accordingly, arrangements have been made to distribute the urea to agricultural service centres across the island by Ceylon Commercial Fertiliser Company.

Last month, Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera met Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Gopal Baglay and sought India’s help for food security and environmental protection in the island nation, as it faces the worst economic crisis in its post-independence history.

In May, India assured Sri Lanka to immediately supply 65,000 metric tonnes of urea to avoid any disruption to the current Yala cultivation season in Sri Lanka.

Yala is the season of paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka that lasts between May and August.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s decision last year to ban chemical fertiliser imports in order to turn into a green economy has caused a food shortage with crop losses amounting to 50 per cent.

Rajapaksa later admitted that his decision to ban chemical fertilisers to go 100 per cent organic was wrong.

Agriculturists have warned that the country may encounter a food shortage by mid-August in the ongoing economic crisis.

India has committed more than USD 3 billion to debt-ridden Sri Lanka in loans, credit lines and credit swaps since January this year.

Sri Lanka’s annual fertiliser imports cost USD 400 million.

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, crippled by an acute shortage of foreign exchange that has left it struggling to pay for essential imports of fuel, and other essentials.

The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.

Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.

The price of a 450 gram loaf of bread will be hiked by Rs 20 from midnight Wednesday while other bakery items will see a price increase of Rs 10 in crisis-hit Sri Lanka due to a spike in the cost of wheat flour, an industry association announced on Tuesday.

The decision to hike the prices was taken due to an increase in price of a kilogramme of wheat flour by Rs 32 on Monday, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror news website quoted the All Ceylon Bakery Owners’ Association President N.K.

Jayawardena as saying.

A kilogramme of wheat flour previously priced at Rs 84.50 in the market is now sold at more than Rs 300, the association president explained.

“The rupee value against the dollar does not exceed Rs 400, but the flour price has increased to Rs 300 in the local market and thereby the price of wheat flour has gone up by 400 per cent,” Jayawardena said.

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million people, is under the grip of an unprecedented economic turmoil, the worst in seven decades, leaving millions struggling to buy food, medicine, fuel and other essentials.

Schools have been suspended and fuel has been limited to essential services.

Patients are unable to travel to hospitals due to the fuel shortage and food prices are soaring.

President Gotabya Rajapaksa has officially conveyed to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that he will resign on July 13 as previously announced, the PM Office said on Monday, days after protesters stormed both leaders’ homes in rage over the government’s mishandling of the country’s worst economic crisis.

Protesters since Saturday continue to occupy the three main buildings in the capital, the President’s House, the presidential secretariat and the prime minister’s official residence Temple Trees.

The country, with an acute foreign currency crisis that resulted in foreign debt default, had announced in April that it is suspending nearly USD 7 billion foreign debt repayment due for this year out of about USD 25 billion due through 2026.

Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt stands at USD 51 billion.

Dubai: The family of former Pakistan President General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf on Friday dismissed the rumors of his death and stated that his health is deteriorating and he is hospitalized in UAE.

The former leader, who ruled the country from 2001 to 2008, is admitted to American Hospital in Dubai.

Earlier this evening, social media was flooded with rumors of Musharraf’s passing.

“He is not on the ventilator. Has been hospitalized for the last 3 weeks due to a complication of his ailment (Amyloidosis),” they said in a tweet.

The former President is “going through a difficult stage where recovery is not possible and organs are malfunctioning”, they added, requesting prayers for “ease in his daily living.”

NEW DELHI: American electric carmaker Tesla, which has been seeking a reduction in import duties to sell its vehicles in India, will not manufacture its products locally unless it is allowed to first sell and service its cars in the country, company founder and chief executive Elon Musk has said.

In a tweet responding to a user asking about Tesla setting up a manufacturing plant in India, he said, “Tesla will not put a manufacturing plant in any location where we are not allowed first to sell & service cars.”

Last month, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari had said if Tesla was ready to manufacture its electric vehicles in India then there was ‘no problem’ but the company must not import cars from China.

He had said Tesla wanted to launch its vehicles in India “but import duties are the highest in the world by far of any large country!”.

Currently, India imposes 100 per cent import duty on fully imported cars with CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) value more than USD 40,000 and 60 per cent on those costing less than that amount.

Detroit (US)(AP): Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave the strongest hint yet Monday that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his USD 44 billion offer made last month.

Musk told a Miami technology conference that a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to a report by Bloomberg News, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.

Also at the All In Summit, Musk estimated that at least 20 per cent of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to the report.

The appearance came a few hours after Musk began trolling Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5 per cent of Twitter accounts are fake.

In all, the day’s events bolstered theories from analysts that Musk either wants out of the deal or is seeking a lower price, largely due to a huge decline in value of Tesla stock, some of which he has pledged to finance the Twitter acquisition.

Twitter shares closed Monday down just over 8 per cent at 37.39, below where the stock was just before Musk disclosed that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder. Musk made the offer to buy Twitter for 54.20 per share on April 14.

On Friday Musk tweeted that his plan to buy Twitter was placed on temporary hold as he tried to pinpoint the number of fake accounts on the social media platform. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the hold was pending details of Twitter’s calculation that fake accounts are less than 5 per cent of its users.

In tweets on Monday, Agrawal acknowledged Twitter isn’t perfect at catching spam. He wrote that every quarter, the company has made the estimate of less than 5 per cent spam.

Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews of thousands of accounts that are sampled at random, consistently over time, Agrawal wrote.

Estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5 per cent, he wrote. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.

Musk, using his favourite platform, responded with a smiling emoji of poop, then asked how Twitter’s advertisers know what they’re getting for their money.

Tesla shares closed Monday down nearly 6 per cent at USD 724.37. They have lost about one-third of their value since the trading day before Musk disclosed his Twitter stake.

Musk did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The All In Summit said in an email that it would post the video of Musk’s appearance in the coming days. 

Beijing; At least 25 people were injured when a passenger plane of China’s Tibet Airlines with 122 people onboard veered off the runway and caught fire while taking off in the country’s southwest Chongqing city on Thursday.

The Tibet-bound plane was carrying 113 passengers and nine crew members, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

All the people aboard the plane were evacuated and the injured were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Airport sources said that 25 people have been injured.

Video footage posted by China Central Television (CCTV) showed flames and billowing black smoke from the fuselage of the Tibet Airlines plane on the tarmac at Chongqing Jiangbei international airport, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

People could be seen running from the plane after escaping via an evacuation slide at the rear door.

CCTV said the fire had been extinguished and the runway closed.

The aircraft was about to depart for Nyingchi in Tibet when the fire started.

The airline has said that the accident is under investigation.

This is the second incident involving a passenger plane in China in recent weeks.

On March 12, a Boeing 737 aircraft from Kunming to Guangzhou had crashed in Tengxian county of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. All the 132 people on board, including nine crew members, were killed.

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa is facing calls for his arrest from Opposition politicians for inciting violence against peaceful anti-government protesters that claimed at least five lives, left over 200 people injured and saw arson attacks on the homes of several politicians.

The resignation of the prime minister has automatically annulled the Cabinet and the country is currently being run by his younger brother and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Mahinda Rajapaksa has been accused by the Opposition of inciting the ruling party mobs to attack peaceful protesters by making a defiant speech while addressing several thousands of his supporters to deflect calls for his resignation.

“Rajapaksa (Mahinda) must be arrested and brought before the law,” M A Sumanthiran, the main Tamil legislator, said in a message.

The same sentiments were expressed by former President Maithripala Sirisena and the main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya party’s leader Ranjith Madduma Bandara.

“He must be arrested for encouraging violence. There was no reason to attack the peaceful protesters,” Sirisena said.

The Colombo national hospital said at least 213 people had been admitted for treatment.

One of the protesters who had been brutally assaulted by the Rajapaksa supporters remains in a very critical condition.

Mahinda Rajapaksa later resigned, saying he was making way for his brother president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to set up an all-party interim government.

There were reports from all parts of the island of arson attacks on the homes of ruling party politicians, including on the ancestral house of the Rajapaksa family in the deep southern district of Hambantota.

Meanwhile, Mahinda Rajapaksa vacated the Temple Trees, the official residence of the prime minister, Tuesday morning, according to media reports.

The police on Monday used tear gas and fired in the air to stop a mob which was trying to break into Temple Trees, the office cum residence of the prime minister.

An all-island curfew, which was scheduled to be lifted on Tuesday, was extended last night until Wednesday as arson attacks were reported from most parts of the country.

Army chief General Shavendra Silva called for calm and said the necessary action would be taken to maintain law and order.

In the current state of emergency, the troops are given extensive powers to arrest people.

The Opposition parties urged the reconvening of Parliament before the scheduled date of May 17.

The trade unions announced that they would launch a continuous strike from Tuesday to protest against the government-backed crackdown on the peaceful protests.

The violence occurred as pressure mounted on the embattled government led by President Gotabaya to form an interim administration to overcome the worst economic crisis facing the country.

Sri Lanka is currently in the throes of unprecedented economic turmoil since its independence from Britain in 1948.

The crisis is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which has meant that the country cannot afford to pay for imports of staple foods and fuel, leading to acute shortages and very high prices.

Thousands of demonstrators have hit the streets across Sri Lanka since April 9 seeking the resignation of President Gotabaya and Prime Minister Mahinda, as the government ran out of money for vital imports; prices of essential commodities have skyrocketed and there are acute shortages in fuel, medicines and electricity supply.

In a special Cabinet meeting on Friday, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency with effect from Friday midnight.

This is the second time that an emergency was declared in Sri Lanka in just over a month as the island nation was in the grip of the worst economic crisis.

Beijing:Chinese state media say 53 people died in a building collapse one week ago in central China and 10 were rescued. Authorities said Friday the search had ended for people trapped from the collapse.

The last survivor was pulled out shortly after midnight on Thursday, 5 days after the residential and commercial building in the city of Changsha suddenly caved in on April 29.

At least nine people have been arrested in connection with the collapse on suspicion of ignoring building codes or committing other violations.

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa has likely entered a new wave of Covid-19 earlier than expected as new infections and hospitalizations have risen rapidly over the past two weeks, the country’s health minister said on Friday.

“Whichever way you look at it, it does suggest that we may actually be entering the fifth wave much earlier,” Health Minister Joe Phaahla said Friday at a televised press briefing.

He said officials will be watching carefully over the next few days to determine if the increase is sustained which would confirm a new wave.

The country’s new infections are now several thousand per day, up from a few hundred a few weeks ago.

According to Phaahla, there was currently no information indicating the emergence of a new strain, which scientists had earlier suggested may drive the country’s fifth wave, expected during the country’s upcoming winter season from May into June.

“We have always been informed that when a new wave comes, it will be driven by a new variant, but at this stage we have not been alerted to a definite new variant except changes in the omicron,” said Phaahla.

Three South African provinces — Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape — currently are accounting for 85% of new infections, with the positivity rate in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal above 20%, he said.

Hospitalizations from the new cases are increasing but are still relatively low, Dr. Waasila Jassat from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said.

“We are starting to see a small rise in hospital admissions in the private and public sector,” said Jassat. “Since around the 17 of April, we are seeing a sharp increase in hospital admissions.”

South Africa has experienced the highest number of infections in Africa since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, accounting for more than a quarter of the continent’s 11.4 million cases.

More than 252,000 people in South Africa have died from the virus, but the numbers are considered to be much higher when considering the number of excess deaths recorded since the pandemic compared to the same periods before the pandemic.

Just over 44% of South Africa’s adult population has been vaccinated.

DETROIT: Elon Musk has sold 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock worth roughly $4 billion, most likely to help fund his purchase of Twitter.

Musk reported the sale in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The shares were sold over the past few days, at prices ranging from $872.02 to $999.13.

The world’s richest man, who is the CEO of Tesla, tweeted that he doesn’t plan any further sales of the company’s shares.

Most of the sales took place on Tuesday, a day when Tesla shares closed down 12%, a huge single-day drop.

Analysts said Tesla investors are fearful that Musk will be distracted by Twitter and less engaged in running the electric car company.

Twitter agreed to be acquired by Musk on Monday for $44 billion.