• Sri Lanka has already defaulted on its $51 billion international debt.
• The government has been unable to purchase food, fuel, and other basic products due to a serious scarcity of foreign currency.
• Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated that the country will require $5 billion in the next six months.

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka asked the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday to convene a conference of creditors for $6 billion in loans to keep the country afloat during its unprecedented economic crisis.

Months of daily blackouts, huge lines for gasoline, and record inflation have made living in the 22 million-strong South Asian island nation a nightmare.

The government has already defaulted on its $51 billion international debt, and traders have been unable to purchase appropriate amounts of food, fuel, and other basic products due to a serious scarcity of foreign currency.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has stated that the country will require $5 billion in the next six months to meet its basic necessities, as well as another billion to stabilise the country’s fast weakening currency.

The premier addressed parliament, “We call on the International Monetary Fund to organise a conference to assist unite our financial partners.”

He added a meeting with China, Japan, and India — Sri Lanka’s three largest bilateral lenders — under IMF auspices would be a “huge strength” in securing extra loans.

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Sri Lanka is already in talks with the IMF for a bailout, and has enlisted the expertise of international specialists to restructure its debt, which is made up of approximately half of international sovereign bonds.

Wickremesinghe warned that the country was on the verge of severe food shortages, and that the UN had agreed to publish an urgent appeal for humanitarian relief on Thursday.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s disastrous restriction on agricultural chemical imports last year drastically reduced crop production and sparked farmer protests.

The ban was repealed a few months later, but Sri Lanka still lacks the necessary foreign currency to buy fertiliser, insecticides, and other agricultural chemicals.

After months of protests over the government’s economic mismanagement, Wickremesinghe took over as prime minister in May. His predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s elder brother, resigned down.

In rioting that followed an attack on peaceful demonstrators outside President Rajapaksa’s office in Colombo last month, at least nine people were killed and many more were injured.