The cultivation subsidy has been doubled to Rs. 60,000 per hectare for 13 crops including paddy, capped at two hectares per farmer, and will reach farmers from this week, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Namal Karunaratne has said, NewsFirst reported at 9.01 a.m. on Thursday.
The subsidy was previously set at Rs. 30,000, he said.
Karunaratne also said steps have been taken to extend the subsidy to farmers who cultivate additional crops on land previously used for paddy, “as they had not been eligible for such assistance before.”
The money was voted nine days ago, at the old rate
This is where the announcement needs the record attached to it.
On 6 October, Cabinet approved a fertilizer subsidy for the 2026/27 Maha season at Rs. 30,000 per hectare, capped at two hectares per farmer, with an estimated Rs. 16 billion allocated. The paper was presented by Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation K.D. Lal Kantha, and this desk covered the decision at the time.
The rate, the cap and the season all match. Nine days later the rate has doubled, and Thursday’s filing says nothing about money.
That silence is the story. At Rs. 30,000 a hectare, a Rs. 16 billion envelope would fund claims on roughly 533,000 hectares if drawn down in full. At Rs. 60,000, the same Rs. 16 billion covers roughly 267,000 hectares.
So one of two things must be true, and no filing says which:
- the allocation roughly doubles, to something in the order of Rs. 32 billion, or
- the area covered roughly halves, and the scheme reaches far fewer farmers than the Cabinet paper contemplated.
Neither NewsFirst nor any other outlet reachable from this desk reports a revised allocation, a supplementary estimate, or a fresh Cabinet decision. The arithmetic above is this desk’s, derived from the published rate and the published envelope; it is not reported anywhere.
A Rs. 30,000 step, after a Rs. 5,000 one
The increase is also much larger than anything in the scheme’s recent history.
| Date | Rate per hectare | Change | Announced by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before June 2026 | Rs. 25,000 | — | — |
| June 2026 | Rs. 30,000 | +Rs. 5,000 (+20%) | Commissioner General of Agrarian Development Dhammika Ranatunga |
| 6 October 2026 | Rs. 30,000 | no change (carried into Maha) | Minister K.D. Lal Kantha |
| 15 October 2026 | Rs. 60,000 | +Rs. 30,000 (+100%) | Deputy Minister Namal Karunaratne |
June’s increase was Rs. 5,000. This one is six times that, and it comes four months later. When the rate rose to Rs. 30,000 for the Yala season, Rs. 10,947 million was allocated and 502,836 farmers were named as beneficiaries, with 90 per cent paid by 21 June. Thursday’s filing gives no beneficiary figure.
One thing the October Cabinet decision only hinted at is now explicit
This desk’s 6 October report flagged a change visible in the wording of the Cabinet decision but not confirmed by it. The decision applied Rs. 30,000 to “paddy and other field crops” at a single rate, where earlier rounds of the scheme had paid field crops grown on paddy land less than paddy itself — Rs. 15,000 against Rs. 25,000 in earlier editions. We noted at the time that this looked like a widening of the scheme rather than its continuation, but that NewsFirst “does not say so in terms”.
Karunaratne has now said so in terms. Farmers growing other crops on former paddy land “had not been eligible for such assistance before” and steps have been taken to cover them. That converts the inference into a reported fact, and it means the change here is not only a doubled rate but a wider eligible population drawing on it — which compounds the funding question above rather than easing it.
A naming difference worth flagging
The 6 October Cabinet decision was reported as a fertilizer subsidy. Thursday’s filing calls it a cultivation subsidy, and separately says steps have been taken to provide “subsidies to farm inputs”.
The rate, the two-hectare cap and the timing align closely enough that these are very probably the same instrument. But this desk cannot confirm from the reporting whether the government has renamed the scheme, broadened it from fertilizer to cultivation costs generally, or created a second payment alongside the first. Those are materially different things for a farmer, and for the Treasury. No filing addresses it.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not name the 13 crops, which leaves the scope of the doubling unstated beyond paddy.
It does not say whether Cabinet has approved the new rate, when it did so, or what allocation accompanies it — the central gap. It gives no beneficiary count, no target extent, and no indication whether the Rs. 16 billion voted on 6 October has been increased, redirected or left as it stands.
It does not say whether the rate applies to the 2026/27 Maha season specifically or from some other date, what “from this week” denotes — vouchers issued, or money paid — or through which mechanism farmers claim it. It does not explain the relationship between this announcement and the Cabinet decision nine days earlier, and carries no comment from Minister Lal Kantha, the Department of Agrarian Development or the Treasury.
It also says nothing about fertilizer availability. A cash subsidy pays for inputs that have to exist, and Maha season stocks have been running against disrupted shipping; the 6 October decision coincided with a 21,000-tonne urea vessel anchored off Oman near the Strait of Hormuz. Doubling the cash does not by itself double the supply.
A note on sourcing
This account rests on a single verified newsroom. NewsFirst filed it at 9.01 a.m. on Thursday, and a search of the other verified outlets returned no independent report of Karunaratne’s remarks — results were dominated by earlier rounds of the scheme at different rates, including the 6 October Cabinet decision at Rs. 30,000.
Readers should treat “Cabinet approves fertilizer subsidy” headlines with care generally: as our October report noted, the Rs. 16 billion figure is not a reliable marker for this scheme, since a 2022/23 Maha proposal carried the same estimate at a rate of Rs. 20,000 per hectare. The markers that identify the current decision are the Rs. 60,000 rate, the two-hectare cap, the 13 crops and Deputy Minister Karunaratne as the source.
Source: NewsFirst.
