The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is considering granting $100 million in emergency support to Sri Lanka, the country's finance ministry said on Sunday.

Sri Lanka has requested foreign-exchange liquidity support for state banks from the lender, it said in a statement.

The South Asian nation is mired in its worst economic downturn since 1948, hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, rising oil prices and tax cuts. The country's usable foreign reserves went down to $50 million, Finance Minister Ali Sabry said last week.

With shortage of food, fuel and other basic goods, the economic crisis in Sri Lanka has escalated to national protests, cabinet resignation and even caused a state of emergency. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency for the second time in five weeks on Friday.

The country has more than $4 billion in debt to repay just this year, including a $1 billion international sovereign bond maturing in July.

According to data from Sri Lanka's Department of External Resources, 47 percent of the country's debt came from market borrowings, while 13 percent was from the Asian Development Bank. China owned just 10 percent of the country's foreign debt, roughly the same as Japan.

The multilateral AIIB was founded in 2014 to promote infrastructure investing throughout Asia.

The South Asian nation will also receive between $300 million and $600 million in financial assistance from the World Bank in the next four months, the finance minister said in late April.

(With input from Reuters)