Sri Lanka, Oct. 19 -- The total economic loss caused to the country by the island-wide power outage on the 17th exceeds four billion rupees, former Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka stated.

Writing a post on his official Facebook account, Patali Champika Ranawaka pointed out that the loss incurred by the Ceylon Electricity Board alone due to the power outage that lasted over seven hours exceeds 400 million rupees.

The electricity system directly contributes between 15% and 20% to the country's Gross National Product, making the damage caused to the overall economy ten times higher, Patali Champika Ranawaka pointed out.

Although power failures can occur due to natural disasters and technical reasons, a system control centre was built an...