We poor souls in Sri Lanka sometime learn the meaning of certain words through disasters.

Majority of us learned about Tsunami after it caused the deaths of about 35,000 people and witnessing unprecedented devastation unfolding in front of our own eyes.

Ordinary men and women (hoi polloi) are now learning about the word “Hedging”. Everyday the media gives a fairly heavy dose of news about the hedging experience that went drastically wrong. People are lapping up news about an alleged scandal. Parliament is also erupting with questions and answers from both sides.

Even the Sinhala media calls it hedging.  We are gradually learning and experiencing the bad effects of oil hedging that went drastically wrong. Some say that if the oil prices remain at current levels for next five months the loss would be enormous and will deal a deadly blow to the economy of the country. 

Some call it scandalous and opine that the hedging fiasco will eventually cost a staggering amount of   700 million US Dollars to the coffers of Sri Lanka. . According to economic pundits that amount is 30% of our total foreign reserves.

In this hullabaloo the fuel prices remain more or less the same in spite of the price of a barrel of crude oil has down more than 100 US Dollars in the recent weeks. Worse was yet to come.

A few public spirited citizens filed petitions in the Supreme Court seeking relief. Chairman of the Petroleum Corporation lost the job and the job of the Minister of Petroleum hangs in the balance. Soon after the verdict one of the petitioners, a Buddhist monk, commented that the judiciary did what the executive and the legislature could not do. The opposition has called the Cabinet to resign. Looks like absolute mayhem.

We are holding our breath and waiting, what is the next word we are going to learn!