What happened

Sri Lanka's deepening 2022 economic crisis — a foreign-currency shortage that saw reserves fall roughly 70% over two years to about $2.31 billion by February 2022 — left the government unable to pay for fuel-oil and diesel shipments needed to keep its thermal power plants running, including a $52 million diesel shipment that sat unable to be offloaded for lack of foreign exchange. The Ceylon Electricity Board and power ministry responded with progressively longer scheduled nationwide power cuts: severe rationing began in early March 2022 at around 7 hours daily, was extended to about 10 hours by mid-March, and reached 13 hours daily by 31 March at the worst of the crisis, continuing in some form for months afterward as the broader economic and fuel crisis persisted through mid-2022. At least two major hospitals, including the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, suspended routine surgeries and diagnostic testing due to critically low medical supplies compounding the power shortages, while emergency services continued operating. The government asked roughly 1.3 million public-sector employees to work from home to conserve fuel. This crisis is documented as an economic/fuel-supply-driven operational failure, distinct from the earlier 17 August 2020 cascading-fault blackout recorded separately in this dataset, and preceded the mass protests that led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.