Crisis-hit Sri Lanka's economy shrinks 1.6% in the March quarter

Sri Lanka’s economy fell back into contraction last quarter as the country battled its worst economic problems since independence, with emergency aid to stabilise the island nation proving elusive.

Gross domestic product declined 1.6 per cent in the quarter ended March from a year earlier, the Department of Census and Statistics said in a statement on Tuesday. That’s shallower than a 3.6 per cent contraction seen by economists in a Bloomberg survey and compares with a revised 2 per cent expansion in the previous quarter.

The contraction likely marks the beginning of a painful and long recession for the country, whose Prime