The Central Bank of Sri Lanka says that the Central Bank intervened to control the rapid decline in the price of the American dollar and bought about 500 million dollars from the local exchange market in the last few days. “Since January, the central bank has taken about 1 billion dollars with Mandatory sales. About 500 million have been taken in the last few days. If we had not intervened, the price would have come down further,” said Dr. P.K.G. Harishchandra, Director of the Economic Research Department of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.