Colombo: Sri Lanka, which has run out of dollars to purchase fuel and is printing rupees to pay local salaries, aims to stop injecting local currency to quash Asia’s fastest inflation.

The inflation rate is estimated to reach 60%, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament Tuesday before a monetary policy review due Thursday. Talks for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund are complicated because the nation is bankrupt, he added.

Wickremesinghe now sees Sri Lanka reaching a staff-level agreement with the IMF in August, delayed from the June deadline provided earlier.