Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has told Australia’s High Commissioner that government policy is destroying Sri Lanka’s small solar businesses, and called for a power generation policy built on continuous supply at the lowest unit price.

Premadasa made the remarks after a meeting at the Opposition Leader’s Office with Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth, convened to brief him on government policy decisions affecting solar energy entrepreneurs, Hiru News reported.

That objective is achievable through renewable energy, he said, accusing the government of discarding renewable projects after taking office despite campaigning on them in opposition.

The target he set, against the number installed

Premadasa asked why the country cannot aim for 1 million rooftop solar power systems. Rooftop installations currently stand at around 150,000, he said — making the target he named roughly six and a half times the existing fleet.

He said solar entrepreneurs add close to 2,500 megawatts of capacity to the grid and save the country more than Rs. 25 billion a month. Both figures are claims he has made before, in the same terms at the Public Utilities Commission a week earlier, where he put the saving at around Rs. 25 billion without specifying a period. Neither number is independently established, and the monthly framing is his own.

Multi-billion-rupee investments continue to flow into thermal power plants, he said, despite the country’s solar, hydro and wind resources.

The tariff and the net-plus complaint

Premadasa said the tariff paid for a unit of solar energy was cut from Rs. 37 to Rs. 27 and then to below Rs. 20. He questioned whether the government is following the agenda of the thermal and fuel power plant sectors by creating conditions that force solar entrepreneurs out of their investments through the net-plus scheme.

The policy shift he is objecting to is documented. New rooftop connections moved from net metering and net accounting to net plus, a change industry experts say leaves consumers worse off. Energy Minister Anura Karunathilake has rejected claims of solar curtailment as “entirely baseless”, and on 3 October the government signed financing with the ADB, EU and Japan for rooftop solar and net metering — a package that cuts against the charge that renewable projects are being abandoned.

Premadasa said the solar sector created thousands of entrepreneurs from 2016, drawing engineers, technical officers and self-employed people into the industry, and that micro, small and medium enterprises built on solar now face destruction. A state policy is crippling those businesses, he said, because entrepreneurs in the sector lack political or crony connections.

The security argument

Premadasa linked the case to the Middle East. Relying heavily on fuel and thermal plants amid conflict near the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb poses severe risks to the country’s present and future, he said, urging Sri Lanka to learn from the renewable energy experience of countries such as Australia and Norway.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya will extend maximum support to any programme promoting renewable energy, he said.

Not reported

The account carries no response from Duckworth or the Australian High Commission, and does not say whether Australia offered anything. It does not say who else attended, give a date for the solar entrepreneurs’ grievances to be taken up in Parliament, or carry any government reply to the claims. The “below Rs. 20” tariff figure is not attributed to a published tariff schedule, and the 150,000-installation count is the Opposition Leader’s own.

Only Hiru News had filed an English-language account of this meeting at the time of writing. An Ada Derana report on a related Premadasa statement on solar restrictions could not be retrieved — its pages have returned a CloudFront block for nine consecutive days.