Sri Lanka, which has run out of USD to purchase fuel and is printing rupees to pay local salaries, aims to stop injecting local currency to suppress surging inflation. The country’s annual inflation rate jumped to 54.6% in June from 29.8% in May. On Tuesday, the country’s PM said “the inflation rate is estimated to exceed 60% by year-end”. The PM also admitted that his country is bankrupt and will face a deep recession this year as the economy is expected to shrink by 7% in 2022. Meanwhile, the government restricted fuel supplies and urged residents to stay home until 10 July as the government could not source fuel. Acute shortages of food, fuel, and medicine will continue. On the positive side, the PM said that recent discussions with the IMF to seek economic assistance for the country had been ‘successful’. Sri Lanka will submit a debt restructuring plan to the IMF for approval by August.