New Delhi: Authorities on Monday halted trading on Sri Lanka’s stock exchange after the share market plunged 5.9 percent, says a media report. The debt-laden country is struggling to pay for imports of fuel and other essentials due to a severe shortage of foreign currency, leading to hours-long power cuts and widespread demonstrations that continued despite a weekend curfew.
Trading was halted on Sri Lanka’s stock exchange seconds after it opened Monday when the blue-chip index dropped 5.92 percent following a mass cabinet resignation in the face of an economic crisis.
The S&P index fell more than the five percent needed to trigger a circuit breaker that halts trading for half an hour, the Colombo Stock Exchange said.
This comes even as Sri Lanka’s president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is all set to appoint a new cabinet Monday as security forces brace for possible violence with more protests expected against worsening shortages of food, fuel, and medicines, the Media report said.
The son of Sri Lanka’s prime minister resigned from the cabinet on Monday, and several other members have offered to do so, a minister said, just days after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency following protests over an economic crisis, as per a media report.
(Smit)