The Latest Breaking News from Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sri Lanka has approved a four-day work week for public sector workers to help them cope with a chronic fuel shortage and encourage them to grow food, the government said on Tuesday, as it struggles with its worst financial crisis in decades.

The war in Ukraine has generated an economic tidal wave that is crashing over countries near and far. Among the more far-flung is Sri Lanka, half a world away from the battlefield, where surging food and fuel prices have supercharged a downward spiral that was already under way.

It was the moment when two brothers who had dominated Sri Lanka's politics for nearly 20 years finally went their separate ways.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister says the United Nations has arranged a worldwide public appeal seeking help for the island nation’s food, agriculture and heath sectors amid serious shortages caused by its worst economic crises in recent memory

Sri Lanka will need $5 billion over the next six months to ensure basic living standards, and is renegotiating the terms of a yuan-denominated swap worth $1.5 billion with China so as to fund essential imports, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

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It has been nearly three weeks since Ranil Wickremesinghe took over as prime minister of Sri Lanka with a daunting mandate to pull the crisis-weary country from the brink of an economic abyss that threatens to tear it apart

Sri Lanka seeks to secure around $5 billion in funding this year to cover repayments for fuel imports and other items bought through credit lines, and another $1 billion to bolster its foreign reserves, the prime minister's office said on Thursday.

Sri Lanka is facing one of the worst economic crises in recent decades, triggering public anger and mass protests, which have fostered unity across ethnic and religious lines.