Supermarket shelves are bare and restaurants can’t serve meals, but Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is a bonanza for used car dealers, with vehicle shortages pushing prices higher than a house in a nice area.
The island nation of 22 million is on the brink of bankruptcy, inflation is red hot and the government has barred a range of “non-essential” imports to save dollars needed to buy food, medicine and fuel.
In the car market, this two-year ban has kept factory-fresh automobiles off local roads, forcing desperate buyers to pay some of the world’s highest prices for beaten-up compacts and no-frills family sedans.
Anthony Fernando spent a recent weekend coursing through sales lots in the Colombo outskirts on behalf of his daughter, who has tried to find an affordable set of wheels for nearly a year.
“She was thinking that prices will come down,” the 63-year-old told AFP, but now she is “paying for procrastinating”. Prices have gone “beyond the reach of a common person”, he said.
A five-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser was on offer online for an eye-watering 62.5 million rupees ($312,500) triple the pre-ban rate, and enough to buy a house in a middle-class Colombo neighbourhood or a new luxury apartment in the city centre.
A decade-old Fiat five-seater with a busted engine that might be stripped for parts elsewhere was listed at $8,250 — more than twice Sri Lanka’s average yearly income.
“A car and a house are symbols of success,” said a grinning Sarath Yapa Bandara, the owner of one of the capital’s biggest dealerships. “That is why most people are willing to buy even at these high prices.”
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