COLOMBO: Money-strapped Sri Lanka’s nationwide service on Monday ended direct flights to Russia-the crisis-hit island’s greatest supply of tourists-because of the Ukraine warfare. It used to be the one operator of direct connections and the transfer is a big blow to Sri Lanka’s hopes of reviving its pandemic-battered tourism trade and incomes foreign currency to import meals, gasoline and drugs, which can be briefly provide.
Sri Lankan Airways stated it used to be preventing the Colombo-Moscow path with instant impact, blaming prohibitive insurance coverage charges after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. As well as, world sanctions on Russian banks made it inconceivable for its Moscow workplace to repatriate its income, a spokesman advised AFP.
No Russian airline operates direct flights between the 2 international locations. Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst financial disaster since its independence from Britain in 1948. Out of the 82,300 international vacationers who visited the rustic in January, about 13,500 or 16.4 % had been Russians, adopted by way of 11,750 Indians and seven,770 Ukrainians.
Sri Lankan Airways operated 3 flights every week to the Russian capital till preventing broke out remaining month and had lowered the frequency to 2. Trip brokers stated Colombo-Moscow airfares on choice Heart Jap carriers spiked after the Sri Lankan Airways determination.
The airline stated its pullout used to be because of “operational restrictions which are outdoor of the airline’s regulate” and promised to refund the ones with flight bookings. “We’re intently tracking the location and we wish to resume flights in this sector once imaginable,” an airline respectable advised AFP. “Industrial components compelled us to halt the flights.” The cave in of the recreational sector quickly after the pandemic broke out in 2020 noticed Sri Lanka lose greater than 4 billion greenbacks in tourism earnings.
Russia could also be a key purchaser of Sri Lanka’s tea, the primary export commodity. The rustic is gripped by way of shortages of meals and gasoline as industrial banks have run out of bucks to finance crucial imports. Colombo has stated it’ll search an IMF bailout as the rustic’s foreign currencies reserves had hit $2 billion on the finish of February, in comparison to $7.5 billion two years in the past. – AFP