12 June 2023 02:53 am Views - 572
Import restrictions on 286 products were lifted from Friday (9th) night, the Finance Ministry said in a brief statement as Sri Lanka slowly comes out from its worst foreign exchange crisis, which snowballed into a full-fledged socio-economic and political crisis.
Since April, 2022 Sri Lanka had placed import restrictios on over 3,200 products with the country’s foreign exchange buffers coming to near zero level.
However, from the latter part of last year restrictions on certain products were relaxed with the improvement in foreign exchange situation following the country’s US$ 3 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves have increased to US$ 3.5 billion in May and the rupee has appreciated 24 percent against the US dollar.
The debt standstill which was announced in April 2022 and the import restrictions have largely helped both currency and foreign reserves to gain.
However, Sri Lanka is expected to gradually lift all the import restrictions as per the conditions agreed with the IMF.
Following the latest move, State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said only 928 product types are subject to import restrictions now, out of which 306 are vehicles.