COLOMBO, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka disbursed 5 billion rupees (15.4 million U.S. dollars) to the banking system to be distributed among beneficiaries selected under the government's Aswesuma welfare program, a state minister said on Monday.

State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe told the media that money will be transferred to the individual bank accounts of 800,000 beneficiaries selected out of 1.5 million shortlisted for benefits under the program within the next few days.

He said plans are in place to increase the number of beneficiaries to 2 million.

"We introduced this program to give relief to people who became economically vulnerable after the crisis," he said.

Sri Lanka is going through an economic crisis at the moment with the country suspending loan repayment.

However, the country's central bank said earlier that domestic economic activity is expected to recover in the second half of this year.

According to the central bank, recovery would be supported by normalization of monetary conditions, improvement in business confidence, enhancement in supply conditions, relaxation of import restrictions, and the impact of growth-promoting structural reforms. Enditem

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