and be al jazeera, ukraine's ambassador for catherine has called on russia to be kicked out of fifo over the invasion of his country. world football chief serv matter of fif as congress and catherine as capital though her russian delegates also attended. and on friday, we're going to have a special program following the world cup draw as it happens, live in doha. our coverage will begin at $1545.00, gmc ah, and now the top stories on al jazeera, russian president vladimir putin has threatened to cut off gas supplies. the countries that do not start paying for russian gas in rubles from friday, he says foreign buyers will be required to open accounts with russian banks in the demand as an attempt to boost the russian currency, which has of course been hit by sanctions, germany and france have already rejected the demand,

despite europe getting around 40 per cent of its gas from russia. who's little to need you. i signed an order that establishes the rule of trade with natural gas with the so called hostile states. we are offering a clear system that they have to open accounts and roubles, and payments have to be made through these accounts from the 1st of april. if they don't, we will consider it a non fulfillment of contract. nobody sells us anything for free and we will not do charity. so their existing contracts will be suspended when they use them as often . so the u. s. is releasing millions of barrels of oil from reserves to try and lower soaring crude prices. president, job ida is ordering $1000000.00 barrels to be released on to the market every day for the next 6 months. global oil prices of surge to record highs following russia's invasion of ukraine. this is a war time bridge to increase oil supplier until production ramps up later this year. and it is by far the largest release barnett around national reserve in our

history and provide historic amount of supply for historic amount of time. a 6 months bridge to the fall. a convoy of 45 buses has been sent by ukraine's government to transport people trying to evacuate the besieged city of what do you call around the 170000. people are still trapped there in desperate need of food, heat, power, and water. on wednesday, russia announced the ceasefire to allow civilians to leave. shelling, meanwhile, has continued around the capital key in the city of cheddar neve, despite russian assurances of scaling down operations there. nato is warning that russian troops are regrouping for new attacks in ukraine's east. those are the top stories that stay with us. the stream is coming up next, i'll have more news for you in half an hour. thank you for watching. bye bye. ah.

i think i found the ok welcome to the stream. today we are focusing on sri lanka and the worst economic crisis. the country has been through in decades, how regular people managing as prices go up and facing goods. are really hard to find. this is a conversation that you're invited to as well on youtube. the comment section is live ready for your thoughts, your comments and being part of the discussion sima lacking must nam, may that my mother not faced such hardship before with i'm out of the last year or 2. it has been very difficult to and i get paid a good salary,

but i no longer can manage with that gun when we get up in the morning. the prices have w, we're done. now. we only get half of what our sellers could get us before this. literally put the fault is not with my job or the salary. i get that the problem is with the rising play such a merger that end on the bacon bug. i've got a gun joining the conversation to help us understand what an economic crises in sri lanka looks like today. we have monopoly, he, me, and hasha. welcome of 3 of you to the stream. me now, please introduce yourself to out the audience. i show they know that you are just remind them that in, for those to do, i've been in journalism for something like that. he has no right out of school and a little over half of that with 0. so i've been reporting on chill anchor for that time for the channel. so glad to have you. i'm broadly heaney. welcome to the stream. please introduce yourself to our international audience. my pleasure to be in conversation is one of the uni fernando antoniette. lo and i haven't spoken to

a member, i representing the opposition yet to having an hello hoshal. introduce yourself. drag global audience. hi, this is hi chevy silver. i'm a member of parliament representing the opposition. i was previously in government, a non cabinet minister of economic reform, blessedly here. i said, guess what i wanted to really get from you is what does an economic crises little look like? what does it feel like? what is the experience of that earlier? well, we spoke to cover ruth, who just did a list of what it is like in sri lanka to day have and listen me now and then come immediately off the back with your thoughts and new experiences to the short a, you know, gas shortage is we have us, i can short a yes. we have new short term in georgia. yes. for the for the life is really bad

and be for some of the be but some of the families be away without the means that need to be. i've been trying to see some consensus on the 45. the price will have been rising as you heard that list, but it's not just the fact that it's the prices that are rising. there are shortages, people essentially go to the shops, they can buy the powder. obviously the amount and the quantity of goods they can buy for the limited amount of money is getting less and less. and obviously the salaries are pretty much fixed as they have been. so people are finding, finding that the buying power has reduced. they're also having issues of so thing essential, good things like fuel cooking, gas, and more recently medicines and particular essential food items. it's very much difficult because your average families are having to spend lots of time in use.

you know, certain families have complained that you know, the mothers in bonds the fathers in another sometimes it's reality that we are finding. we've seen it over the recent weeks and it's making people very, very angry because sometimes not just is the fact that you know, things shooting up in price. that sometimes, even if you have the money and you spend hours and hours in use, you still don't get what you want. me can you remember when they economic crises started to bite, where you spent a big chunk of your day queuing for goods? when can you say this is what it started? so this economy crises, it was something that was visible and i would say 18 months back. it was borne by anybody to go. bob is that true lanka will be going into a crisis and that might lead to situation, but there might be debt before it and the price of goods will rise and also be. so

the government on president li printing money, which actually led to this inflation and decide what to that situation that we are currently in. so this is a situation, i wouldn't say something that shocked overnight, but it was coming and the government could have taken corrective measures, but sadly, it didn't happen. and here we ought to be a quite an unfortunate situation. the people are struggling to manage their day to day lives. half of the day they are being spending on kuza struggling to feed decades. the 3 me all the sec does virtually said music. does this more than media enterprise as well as more time workers. everybody middle income to low income, every sick time has come to us because the government has been unable to provide the b. it seeks for the functioning of the country. ha ha, it's interesting that he said a 2 months ago there was this prediction. could that knowledge have saved?

she'll anchor from where it is right now. would you still be in exactly the same place? because, of course, as a coffee, pandemic, 2 and a lot of the tourism that was $1000.00. it was coming to sher lanka. there isn't not money there for the government to draw from asha well, this could have been avoided. this need not have happened. in fact, i made a long speech as the opening speaker for the opposition. when the 2021 budget was presented in november of 2020 and i urge the government to seek the support of the i m f. because what we currently have is, are toxic combination of a debt or hang on a liquidity crisis. so you're right. yes. we lost some good some dollars, but due to the mismanagement off the currency and the remittances actually failed shock. people started sending money

through the black market. that created a discrepancy in the future on the black market. in that liquidity crisis, cause the government to stop using that he sells it. now that he serves have fallen door almost absolutely nothing. so it is a mismanagement of the economy. yes. the panel to being played some role icon denied that. but this certainly could have been avoided when you said, i'm just going to same analogy. i know we were working on this to try and get a voice from the coalition government to come and join us and. and we tried really hard because we wanted to have that voice in, it's really important conversation. we weren't able to do that. but just thinking about how the government, the clinician coming out, is handling this crisis. a thought you're saying this is mismanagement. what are

you seeing again, there are obviously a certain amount of challenges that the government has had to face. it's not something that hasn't been an easy thing, not just called the government here in chicago, but as a global phenomenon, you know, price rises, shortages potential goods, food energy is being seen across the board. and for the government here they have over the a sort of a double whammy. if we will make you have to remember that she had this devastating terrorist attack in 2019 almost 300 people were killed in a series of coordinated boma attacks on easter sunday. 2019 and that in itself does the 1st blow on the economy in terms of affecting in a major way tourism because for months on end, you know, people were taken back. they weren't sure of what exactly was going on. and that

did quite a serious blow. we were just beginning as an economy also to recover that's not to say the financial houses in order. there were sort of cracks and issues, but that seat of attack deal is serious low. and the government had to deal with the consequences of that just, you know, maybe 10 months or so while things were beginning at a low fall, slowly into place. if we got back with it as well, that is not to say that it is the kind of reason or the excuse that things are falling apart. did deal a blow, but definitely in terms of the re, the manage things as she says, of mismanage things that are quite a few people across the board that feels that things could have been had much better the. they could have actually worked with a much broader people, not just, you know, gone down there or sort of solutions. we start looking at the big picture. so

there's a general feeling that things could have. all right, let me, let me show you something on my laptop, la heaney, have a look at this. this is a community meal share that it's on my laptop. this is a tweet i want to share with you. and then with this tweak, goes alongside a comment that nitika sent to us because she's seeing whether you decide this is government mismanagement, or covey, or loss of taurus doors. there are people in need and she'll anchor right now, and she's trying to help them. i really want to get your take on what it is that the communities doing for themselves and that that they have to do for themselves. he's in a dk festival community. miyoshi was initiated by myself. busy and my friends and family to support hon group student is very difficult time. we understand that the economic price is in sri lanka. 50 many homes right now. so what we do is take walk hooked meals into people's homes when they request it, even if they do not request. if we send out

a notification through certain community leaders and we ask them to allow us to support them during this time. lini go ahead. yes, so there are many informal inform me there are a lot of support services that are happening in the country. like, for example, if you take the informal a, there are certain initiatives taken by to your organizations, different labs where they intervene to support not just by ford, but to assist in education in terms of that also in terms of covering their day to day expenses. so i would say from the government, but say there is no such is not direct initiatives, but in formal sector there are certain initiatives that are being taken to assist. i'm just got to you too because i already taken part in the conversation as well. hush, let me just put this one to you. i have feel fast. the new car is far seeing it,

savings vanish, and purchasing power decline. this is feeling a brain drain. it could take some good, we can call me back on track your thoughts briefly. how shall i ask? that is absolutely true, because when i repeat depreciate by almost 40 percent, and if you look at the curb mock of the black market, it says to proceed. ringback far more than that, what it means is the post savings have diminished so sure that that is, that is what's going on. and even today i was coming out of a small cafe, a cup of coffee, and 2 young men came up to me and said, hi so you know, i'm 32 years old and i'm on the work and i want to leave. what do you think? i should do, and i hear this all the time and it's very sad. but i want to also add something to

what me know said, and that is yes, the dollars not flowing in did have an impact, but it was not really that good. this crisis. what triggered the crisis wasn't responsible. the tax got that came before the pandemic, which caused a massive hole in the treasury of about one 3rd. the revenue that was lost. and in order to. ready fill that hole, the central bank started printing money. and when people like us want the central bank, i just ask because i understand they plebeian, can you just print money? isn't that disastrous? it is absolutely disasters. this is what you learned in principles of macroeconomics by the central bank continued to see to the b. but look, and you know this,

you not cause inflation. and they have been that so much money just to give you a sense of how much i, while, while the economy for the last 2 years go by point one percent money supply. that is, all the money that is available in this economy has grown by 41 percent. so it is no surprise that prices are going up and when you say a prices, it includes the prize of u. s. dollars. so so therefore this has been a man made disaster and i want to also add in the middle of. ringback pandemic the government decided one fine day overnight they were going to ban the importation of fertilizer and that just was a death blow ah do agriculture. and what we're hearing is that with this of us

in that ice. ready producing areas harvest has come down perhaps by 40 to 60 percent off. if i know if i made it into chat, that the banning of fertilizer wasn't going on a whim. it was, they wanted that to be organic fat life for layla banning non organic fertilizer as i understand is that correct? yeah, i mean it's no card in the world. there is no counting the one that has a fully organic agriculture sector. nothing nowhere. right. so a lot of lot of people who know about these experts, the professors ok also door door. so i should have put a spotlight on where you think the government is being deficient. i'm going to remind people that you are an opposition politician. so this is your job. in the meantime, me now i've just been looking on twitter algebra english, have a look here on my laptop. we have a developing story placing for lanka, fine, t a gas and water cannons. dispos, huge crowds. protesting near the president's residence in columbia,

you have done reporting at protest and demonstrations. i'm just going to remind our audience, some of the stories that you filed, this one in particular was a demonstration. quite recently. let's take a look another day and another valley with thousands of angry people taking to the streets, into lanka. they came from around the country, desperate to be heard without municipal de loc, grenada. people are facing hardships, even those who have money don't have goods to buy. children, students, parents, everyone is facing problems. several of the crowds carried banners that said 70 full years of good option. enough is enough. people are crying, patients are dying, and the government is lying o the government as a father, the people have had enough johnny that the big one to make a deal choice for a new government that

a so we have ongoing process and demonstrations, a current protest outside the presidents palace, how is the government responding manuel, to all of this criticism? obviously, not very happy camper at this time because this being the series of demonstrations very large show of numbers if you like. and the one that you saw was affiliated to political groups that were one or 2 sort of massive scale protest i've seen in recent years. something like 35000 people, but one by one of the main opposition parties. in fact, that is part of the g b that we saw on the 15th of march, then the rotors that you just seen this week. thousands of pharma congregating in the north, central sort of city of pulling out which is very much a, one of the back of the agricultural part of the country. and again,

it comes back to that fertilize a band that you referred to earlier. the fact that literally overnight the government brought in a ban on chemical fertilizer on we decide and pesticide. we thought as much as a, by your leave without discussing it, with farmers without, you know, testing the water, so to speak, to find out what people thought to look at, seizing it in. because that's what the go job a roger election manifesto did talk about a green agriculture moving to hell, the grow it growing practices and things like that. so he did talk about 10 years. but having put that aside and bringing in this band overnight, really to farmers by surprise, they really struggled to find the proper fertilizer with decades. and they could, they had all of these chemical fertilizers product through them, and they got used to it. in fact, one of the bombers we talked to at the valley, the other day it said look, it's like a drug addict. you can't expect a drug the just to go cold turkey overnight after, you know,

he's been used to that much of not projects in the system. it's just not going to happen. so this is something that really sort of affected and hit palmers and you see that angle when they come together because they've just sort of harvest the loss of talked about in the center province, has harvested that crop. and the numbers that we're hearing, as partially referred to earlier as anything from i've heard 40 percent passions that up to 60 percent. so that is evidence. even though we haven't heard the official final figures yet from the government and institutions that the harvest have fallen in a major way. and this is obviously the thing directly to the livelihood of thousands of people in those agricultural communities. hey, i just want to get some thoughts from you about present roger pac sir, because i'm going to play a little bite of him talking about asking the i m f for help box. the

whole policy, economic policy for sri lanka was we can do this alone, we're going to get financing from not just from within the region, but we've been sri lanka that didn't work out. he's back tracking a little bit. now he's back tracking a lot. what do you make of the decisions that he's been making, and then i'm going to play his voice. and his approach that he's taking right now, lena? you start? yeah. so it was, is this government came into office. they've had this whole looking approach as opposed to, you know, having an outward looking approach because they had this one point to see that everything can be done within the country. hence even also in this was a managing the debt crisis. so the government wasn't quite reluctant to go to the international assistance. and also we thought we've seen that was some of the, one of the main issues was for a long time, from time to time, the people to see changes from government to government. what is the changes? so when this particular president came into office,

i mean they presented that manifesto the says across pretty. and the point is that, but take a broad forward was somewhat different to the previous government. so this, this particular change effected the economy. now very large scale and how about the way they brought in those policies. they were not in a position to sustain hints that are leading a. 3 and that going to a good option, mismanagement oil connected together, i would say has led to the so called economy crisis. and it is something that they could have avoided, but it is she a she on plan then lack of strategy, lack of taking advice from a professionals and not having the right people in the right place to advice. so i mean, just rely on god has all been a country which has a broad chad chad maintain much shade international relations would go to countries and not just speeding to certain nations, but the f. one is he has been to us in the nation to a certain countries which also has not acted in favor. i mean, if i,

if i might let me put the president in the show because i'm, but he wasn't able to join us all. he spokespeople what i when able to join is because this is how he is framing, how he's going to tackle the economic issue, economic crises, inter lanka, have a listen, have a look at the mild walmack on me. i'm your god. i am well aware of the shortages of essential items and the increase in prices. i'm also aware of issues such as gas shortages, fuel shortages, and power cuts. i am very sensitive to the many sufferings the people have had to experience over the past 2 months. i know that this situation will continue for reasons beyond our control that we make maximum possible efforts with regards to the situation done. jot down more. yesterday's discussion with the international monetary fund was held for this purpose. we hope to find a way to pay off our annual loan installments, sovereign bonds, and so on. subsequent to my discussions with the i m f. i have decided to work with

them after examining the advantages and disadvantages and come up there on your chief. i'm the senior comment sheet, she's thank you for your comments. you're asking. so what do we do about this? i'm really glad that you asked that question. i'm going to go to move towards a jaffa gee, who spoke to us just a little bit earlier with a whole list of what she lancoste should be doing next. here, yes. you have the stock restructuring. unsustainable extend. that date, he had to significantly reduce the energy thought cds, electricity, which is, is going to be possible. we have to lead price our policy to states to be more closely to market street. we have to be controllers on foreign exchange, but that is create a mobility market and we need to have some announcements about policy

increase, texas, which is one of the key reasons that linked to these cracker's effects. and most importantly, urgently and i am in program how sure. thank you so much for sharing your take on what is happening with the economic crisis in sri lanka, lini, we really appreciate you me now. i actually have 30 seconds left in that last 30 seconds. what do you think would happen next? level of anger that you see on the street is something that quite powerful. we saw it at the ng, the update that you talked about there developing story, hundreds of people gathering outside the president house, only for frustration. so it's going to get worse, i believe before i can get better where we're going. falling your reporting on line and on al jazeera. thank you so much man. now la heaney, hasha and all the comments on you chip, appreciate it. i see next time take everybody

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with wherever you go in the world. one airline goes to make it feel exceptional. katara always going places pick up from the al serra london broadcast center t people, unprompted uninterrupted. my beginning of the panoramic pastor, i had some b like why from africa being wiped out of journalist nestle, malik, and right to and political analysts. man, john and me a black people will say things like, we're not going to get back because the africans will not know what to do with them . there is no continent where people have more experience with getting medicine

into people's studio. be unscripted on algebra. the u. s. is always of interest to people. all right, the world people pay attention to what we're doing here and i did. he was very good at bringing the news to the world from here. the hello and barbara ferris. these are the top stories on al jazeera, russian president vladimir putin has threatened to cut off gas supplies, the countries that don't start paying for russian guessing roubles from friday. the demand is an attempt to boost the russian currency, which has been hit by sanctions, germany and france civil when he rejected the demand that despite europe getting around 40 percent of its gath from russia need. i find an order that establishes the rule of trade with natural gas with the so called hostile states. we are offering to clear.