State retail chain Lanka Sathosa Limited has cut the prices of six essential food items at all its outlets islandwide with effect from tomorrow, 26 September.
The reductions were announced on Friday evening and apply across the chain’s entire branch network, the Daily Mirror reported, citing the Ministry of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development.
The new prices
| Item | New price (per kg) | Reduction |
|---|---|---|
| Big onions | Rs. 309 | Rs. 10 |
| White sugar (bulk) | Rs. 245 | Rs. 4 |
| Red dhal | Rs. 242 | Rs. 2 |
| Wheat flour | Rs. 174 | Rs. 5 |
| Red raw rice | Rs. 173 | Re. 1 |
| White raw rice | Rs. 174 | Rs. 5 |
The Daily Mirror gives the six new prices and says the reductions range from Re. 1 to Rs. 10, with big onions recording the largest cut. Newswire, reporting the same announcement, supplies the individual reduction for each item, and those figures reconcile with the Daily Mirror’s stated range — the smallest is Re. 1 on red raw rice and the largest Rs. 10 on big onions.
Taken together, the six items fall by a combined Rs. 27 a kilogramme, from Rs. 1,344 to Rs. 1,317 for one kilogramme of each.
Newswire attributes the announcement to a media release from Lanka Sathosa Marketing Manager Ishan Godamanne, and reports the chain describing the cuts as relief for consumers under its mandate to support poverty alleviation.
Context
Lanka Sathosa operates one of the largest state-owned grocery networks in the country and is periodically directed to adjust staple prices as an instrument of cost-of-living policy rather than purely as a commercial decision. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has argued that market competition alone cannot regulate prices and has pressed for the chain and the cooperative sector to be used more actively for that purpose.
This is at least the fourth round of reductions this year. The chain cut prices on 11 essential items from 24 July, and on separate batches of nine and 18 items in June.
The network itself has been contracting. Parliament was told this month that 31 Lanka Sathosa outlets have closed since 2024, with 424 still trading, as landlords reclaim leased premises from even profitable branches.
A naming note
The Daily Mirror lists the third item as red dhal; Newswire calls it red lentils. These are the same commodity, commonly sold in Sri Lanka as masoor dhal.
Not reported
Neither outlet says how long the revised prices will hold, whether the cuts follow a fall in import or wholesale costs, or what the corresponding open-market prices are, so the size of the saving against private retailers cannot be established. Neither reports whether any items rose in the same revision.
