IMF team arrives in Sri Lanka as economic crisis deepens

Special IMF team arrives in Sri Lanka as economic crisis deepens
Anti-government demonstrators take part in a protest near the President’s House in Colombo, Sri Lanka, May 10, 2022. (AFP)
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Updated 21 June 2022

IMF team arrives in Sri Lanka as economic crisis deepens

IMF team arrives in Sri Lanka as economic crisis deepens
  • Finance chiefs to hold talks with Sri Lankan officials until June 30
  • Sri Lanka must adjust its macroeconomic policies to secure financial backing: Economists

COLOMBO: A delegation from the International Monetary Fund on Monday arrived in Sri Lanka for talks on a bailout program, as the government closed schools and halted all non-essential services in a bid to conserve its fast-depleting fuel reserves.

Sri Lanka is struggling with its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948, following decades of economic mismanagement and more recent policy errors, as well as a hit from the coronavirus pandemic on the country’s tourism and remittances that have shriveled its foreign reserves to record lows.

As the island nation of 22 million people struggled to pay for imports and defaulted on a multimillion-dollar foreign debt payment last month, Sri Lankans have had to endure lengthy blackouts and extreme shortages of basic necessities, including fuel and medicines.

The IMF team’s visit comes as the South Asian country seeks a bailout from the global lender, following a virtual mission that concluded in late May.

“The IMF 10-member team will be here for a period of 10 days, and the first round of talks, which lasted for two hours, was encouraging,” Shanuka Karunaratne, media director at the office of the Sri Lankan Prime Minister, told Arab News.

The team — expected to conclude its visit on June 30 — would “continue discussions on an economic program that could be supported by an IMF lending arrangement,” the financial organization said in a statement.

“We reaffirm our commitment to support Sri Lanka at this difficult time, in line with the IMF’s policies.”

Sri Lanka closed schools in the capital and other major cities on Monday, as non-essential public-sector employees also began working from home for at least two weeks, in a bid to reduce commuting to help the country cope with the chronic fuel shortage.

Long lines stretching several kilometers have formed at many gas stations throughout the country, as some people waited for hours and even days to fill up their tanks.

Shiran Fernando, chief economist at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, said Colombo hoped that the visit from the IMF delegation would lead to a staff-level agreement.

“These discussions are to arrive at a staff-level agreement which does not result in disbursement of funds,” he told Arab News.

He pointed out that Sri Lanka would still need to find other means to finance its imports, whether from the market or credit from other countries or institutions, adding that the government must be committed to reform key areas, such as fiscal, monetary, and state-owned enterprises.

Murtaza Jafferjee, economist and chairman at Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, said Sri Lanka would have to adjust its macroeconomic policies if the talks with the IMF were to be fruitful.

“We need to have a credible macroeconomic adjustment program that the IMF can sign off on — this will permit us to get new money to flow from multilateral and commercial lenders,” Jafferjee told Arab News.

“The government has to act in the best interest of all the people in the country, not be servitude to cronies and sycophants.”

Sri Lankans have staged protests across the country for months, while demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, accusing him of corruption and economic mismanagement. As the financial crisis spiraled into a political one in recent months, there appears to be little trust in the government.

“The government is not a popular nor a stable government,” Mujibur Rahman, a member of Parliament for Colombo district, told Arab News.

“The IMF won’t just give the money, they will see the political and economic stability of the government,” he said.


Indian railways minister says signaling system error led to crash that killed over 300 people

Indian railways minister says signaling system error led to crash that killed over 300 people
Updated 47 min 11 sec ago

Indian railways minister says signaling system error led to crash that killed over 300 people

Indian railways minister says signaling system error led to crash that killed over 300 people
  • Authorities worked to clear mangled wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed Friday night in Balasore

BALASORE, India: The train derailment in eastern India that killed more than 300 people and injured hundreds more was caused by an error in the electronic signaling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks, India’s railways minister said Sunday.
’’Who has done it and what is the reason will come out of an investigation,” Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview with New Delhi Television network.
The explanation came as authorities worked to clear the mangled wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed Friday night in Balasore district of eastern Odisha state, in one of the country’s deadliest rail accidents in decades.
Preliminary investigations revealed that a signal was given to the high-speed Coromandel Express to enter the main track line, but the signal was later taken off, and the train instead entered an adjacent loop line where it rammed into a goods train. The collision flipped Coromandel Express’s coaches onto another track, causing the incoming Yesvantpur-Howrah Express from the opposite side to derail, triggering a three-train collision.
The passenger trains were carrying 2,296 people total.
Trains that carry goods are often parked on an adjacent loop line on the side so the main line is clear for a passing train.
Fifteen bodies were recovered on Saturday evening and efforts continued overnight as heavy cranes were used to remove an engine that had settled on top of a rail car. No bodies were found in the engine and the work was completed on Sunday morning, said Sudhanshu Sarangi, director-general of fire and emergency services in Odisha.
The accident occurred at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on the modernization of the British colonial-era railroad network in India, which has become the world’s most populous country with 1.42 billion people. Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur every year on India’s railways, the largest train network under one management in the world.
Chaotic scenes erupted on Friday night as rescuers climbed atop the wrecked trains to break open doors and windows using cutting torches to try to save people who were trapped inside the rail cars.
Modi visited the crash site on Saturday to examine the relief effort and talk to rescue officials. He also visited a hospital where he asked doctors about the treatments being given to the injured, and spoke to some of the patients.
Modi told reporters he felt the pain of those who suffered in the accident. He said the government would do its utmost to help them and strictly punish anyone found responsible.
Ten to 12 coaches of one train derailed, and debris from some of the mangled coaches fell onto a nearby track. The debris was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction, causing up to three coaches of the second train to also derail, said Amitabh Sharma, a Railroad Ministry spokesperson.
In 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in one of the worst train accidents in India. In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.
Most train accidents in India are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment.
More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, traveling on 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track.


Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia
Updated 04 June 2023

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

Pentagon says concerned over China’s ‘increasingly risky’ actions in Asia

SINGAPORE: The Pentagon voiced concern on Sunday over the Chinese military’s “increasingly risky and coercive activities” in Asia.
“We remain concerned about the PLA’s increasingly risky and coercive activities in the region, including in recent days,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, who is with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a security conference in Singapore.

 


Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings
Updated 03 June 2023

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings

Five Greek police officers in custody pending trial for assisting illegal migrant crossings
  • The five officers had been testifying before an examining magistrate since Saturday morning at the border town of Orestiada
  • Agents from the internal affairs division of the Greek police had been monitoring the five officers since October 2022

THESSALONIKI, Greece: Five police officers accused of cooperating with human traffickers to facilitate the entry of at least 100 migrants into Greece are being held in custody pending trial.
The five officers had been testifying before an examining magistrate since Saturday morning at the border town of Orestiada, in northeastern Greece.
Agents from the internal affairs division of the Greek police had been monitoring the five officers, who serve in a special border guard unit, since October 2022. They also listened into their phone conversations, whose transcripts run into over 2,000 pages. The officers had aroused suspicion by volunteering to patrol at certain times, together.
Authorities say the offices facilitated at least 12 border crossings, collaborating with four traffickers of undetermined nationality who operated from Turkiye.
Authorities allege that the accused officers took a cut from the money the traffickers received from the migrants to take them across the border. When the officers were arrested last Monday in the border town of Didymoteicho, police confiscated some 26,000 euros ($28,000) in cash, and nearly 60 mobile phones.
Almost all the land border between Greece and Turkiye is formed by the Evros River, called Meric in Turkiye. The Evros is a key crossing point into Greece for people seeking a better life in the European Union. Greece has built a high fence along much of the border to prevent migrants crossing, and is planning to further extend it.


Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests
Updated 03 June 2023

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests

Death toll climbs in Senegal after two days of violent protests
  • The flow of migrants from Tunisia has intensified since President Kais Saied made a fiery speech on Feb. 21 claiming illegal immigration was a demographic threat to Tunisia

DAKAR: The death toll from anti-government protests in Senegal has risen to 15, police said on Saturday, as authorities in the capital Dakar began to clear up debris and secure looted shops after two days of unrest.
Most of Dakar appeared quiet on Saturday, but tensions remained high after violent protests in several cities killed six people on Friday, taking the total number killed this week to 15, a police spokesperson said by phone.
The toll has now surpassed the number killed in multi-day protests in 2021, when supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko first took to the streets over a rape trial they say is politically motivated.
Sonko denies any wrongdoing.

FASTFACT

Mobs smashed windows and looted at least two gas station shops in Dakar’s Ouakam and Ngor districts.

Sonko’s sentencing on Thursday, which could prevent him from running in the February presidential election, sparked the latest turmoil as protesters heeded his call to stand up to the authorities.
Mobs smashed windows and looted at least two gas station shops in Dakar’s Ouakam and Ngor districts, while a supermarket in densely populated Grand Yoff was torched and ransacked. Rubble littered the roads that were scarred black by fires.
“The police could not do anything, there were too many of them. The police had to leave after several attempts to control the crowd with tear-gas grenades,” said resident Khadija by the supermarket whose interior was gutted and strewn with broken shelves, mud and trash.
The government has enlisted the army to back up the many riot police still stationed around the city. Over a dozen soldiers guarded the trashed gas station in Ouakam on Saturday, as some shop owners tentatively opened their doors, although streets were unusually empty.
Abdou Ndiaye, the owner of a nearby corner shop said he had closed early the two previous days and opened late on Saturday, fearful of the unrest that he said was the worst he’d seen in his 15 years of business.
“We are so scared because you don’t know when the crowds will come, and when they come they take ... your goods, they are thieves,” he said in a storeroom stacked with sacks of food and household items.
“There are people who demonstrate but there are others who do whatever they want.”
The unrest is the latest in a string of opposition protests in Senegal, long considered one of West Africa’s most stable democracies, sparked by Sonko’s court case as well as concerns that President Macky Sall will try to bypass the two-term limit and run again in February elections.
Sall has neither confirmed nor denied this.

 


Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers
Updated 03 June 2023

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers

Greek police find €3.2 million of cocaine in banana containers
  • Police seized two suspect containers at the port of Piraeus
  • The drugs are estimated to be worth about €3.2 million, police said

ATHENS: Police in northern Greece have seized dozens of packages of cocaine stashed in containers laden with bananas that had been shipped from Latin America, they said on Saturday.
Police seized two suspect containers at the port of Piraeus and, after taking them to the port of Thessaloniki, found 100 “bricks” of concealed cocaine, weighing 161 kilos.
The drugs, which would have been distributed across Greece and other European countries, are estimated to be worth about €3.2 million, police said.
The consignment was found as part of an investigation Greece launched last month with North Macedonia authorities and the US anti-drug agency, following the seizure of about 100 kilos of cocaine also hidden in banana containers at a warehouse in Thessaloniki. Some 14 people have been arrested in that case.