Only one of Sri Lanka’s four crude coconut oil importers pays its taxes, with the other three in default, Deputy Minister Nishantha Jayaweera told Parliament on Thursday.
Jayaweera was responding to a question raised by Samagi Jana Balawegaya MP S.M. Marikkar. The Deputy Minister said the collection of the defaulted taxes is being delayed because the importers have lodged appeals, the Daily Mirror reported.
He did not tell the House how much revenue is outstanding, which companies are involved, or how long the appeals have been pending.
Recovery held up at a bottlenecked commission
The reason given for the delay — appeals — points to a process that state auditors have already found to be badly congested.
A National Audit Office performance report on the Finance, Planning and Economic Development Ministry, reported the same day, found more than Rs.108 billion in disputed tax revenue tied up in an unresolved backlog at the Tax Appeals Commission, across 626 registered appeals.
The audit found that hearings had begun on 611 appeals between 2011 and April 2026 without determinations being issued, and that 146 cases stood “reserved” at the end of 2025 with no final ruling. It also documented a chairman vacancy of nearly three months over the 2025-26 turn of the year, during which the Auditor General said the appeal process was “completely paralysed”.
The Tax Appeals Commission Act No. 23 of 2011 requires a determination within 270 days of a hearing commencing, but the audit said the amendments needed to make that deadline mandatory have not been submitted.
The Deputy Minister did not say whether the coconut oil importers’ appeals form part of that backlog.
Source: Daily Mirror.
