Our economy has completely collapsed.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe delivered a speech in Parliament on Wednesday in which he spoke about the very serious economic crisis the country finds itself in. It is a crisis that has caused alarming shortages of food, fuel, medicine and other basic necessities, and is further complicated by Sri Lanka’s accumulated debts with its international creditors. “Our economy has completely collapsed,” Wickremesinghe said in one of his most popular paragraphs.

– Read also: The serious crisis in Sri Lanka from the beginning

Wickremesinghe gave no indication of what the government intended to do to deal with the current crisis: his speech sounded like a statement of the state of affairs. for some CommentatorsFurthermore, Wickremesinghe wanted to suggest to members of the opposition how far he was from finding a solution to the problem, at least for an immediate solution.

Wickremesinghe, in fact, Recommended by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa after the resignation of former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The appointment of Wickremesinghe, who had until then been in opposition, was also seen as an attempt to revive the economy and put an end to the large and participatory protests that had continued in Sri Lanka for weeks against the government, accused of being involved in – responsible for the economic crisis, considered the worst since 1948, the year When Sri Lanka gained independence from the United Kingdom.

The current situation is due, among other things, to years of corruption, bad choices and investments, populist policies and bankruptcy. For this reason, the protesters called for the resignation of the prime minister and the resignation of the president, both of whom belong to a family with seven brothers who all played important roles. Policy or administratively in Sri Lanka, accused on several occasions of corruption and nepotism.

However, Wickremesinghe’s words likely amounted to a request for help directed at any foreign funder: according to analyst Annette Mukherjee of the Center for Global Development in Washington, who heard him News agency, Wickremesinghe wanted to suggest to foreign governments that the collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy – a country that lies on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes – was not even for them.