Inferior-quality coal has cost the government Rs. 18.3 billion, the chairman of Parliament’s Sectoral Oversight Committee on Infrastructure and Strategic Development told the House on Tuesday, tabling a document setting out the losses.
S. M. Marikkar gave the figure in Parliament and placed the supporting document on the record, the Daily Mirror reported at 10.02 a.m. The filing is two sentences long and carries no breakdown.
This is Marikkar’s figure moving, not a new claim
The number is best read against Marikkar’s own previous one rather than against the government’s.
On 8 October, the same MP told a media briefing that substandard coal imports and emergency purchases had cost Rs. 17.965 billion, citing an expert committee report commissioned by his oversight committee. This desk reported that figure at the time, alongside the Rs. 15.765 billion Energy Minister Anura Karunathilake gave Parliament the same day.
Twelve days later Marikkar’s total has moved to Rs. 18.3 billion — an increase of about Rs. 335 million, or under 2 per cent. The gap between the oversight committee’s accounting and the ministry’s, which was about Rs. 2.2 billion on 8 October, is now about Rs. 2.5 billion.
What is new on Tuesday is therefore not the order of magnitude but the form: a figure previously given at a press briefing has been tabled in Parliament as a document.
The one figure both sides keep agreeing on
Across every version of this accounting, one component has stayed fixed. The minister’s Rs. 15.765 billion included Rs. 8.571 billion spent by the National System Operator buying replacement electricity; Marikkar’s 8 October breakdown put private-sector electricity purchases at Rs. 8,573 million.
Two officials on opposite sides of the House, working from different documents, within Rs. 2 million of each other on the largest single element of the loss. That remains the most firmly corroborated number in the story, and it is the reason the competing totals should be read as different scopes of one event rather than as rival claims.
What the totals do not explain
Neither account closes arithmetically on its published breakdown.
The minister’s two components — Rs. 8.571 billion and Rs. 7.912 billion — sum to Rs. 16.483 billion against a stated total of Rs. 15.765 billion. Marikkar’s 8 October itemisation summed to Rs. 11,749.5 million against a stated Rs. 17,965 million, leaving about Rs. 6.2 billion unaccounted for in what was published.
Tuesday’s filing does not resolve either gap, because it reports no breakdown at all. The document Marikkar tabled may contain one; no outlet has reported its contents.
These are observations about the accounts as published, not findings that any figure is wrong.
Why the number keeps moving
Marikkar has been quoting escalating coal figures for most of the year, and the escalation is partly a function of shipments continuing to arrive. Earlier in 2026 he put the loss from shipments received by then in the single-digit billions, and at one stage projected that the eventual cost could exceed Rs. 30 billion. The Rs. 17.9 billion and Rs. 18.3 billion figures are backward-looking totals from the expert committee’s report; the Rs. 30 billion was a forward projection. They are not alternative measurements of the same quantity.
Where this sits
The coal dispute is the single most persistent business story on this desk’s record this year. A Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Coal Procurement has been examining the purchases, and its term was extended by two months to 16 December in an extraordinary gazette reported the same afternoon as Marikkar’s figure. The commission had requested that extension on 10 October, six days before its mandate was due to expire.
The controversy also now runs into the electricity supply itself. On Monday, SLPP MP D.V. Chanaka blamed substandard coal for the islandwide blackout of 17 October, citing the Ceylon Electricity Board’s own reports to Parliament. No published official finding yet attributes the grid failure to coal quality.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror’s filing does not say what the tabled document is, who prepared it, what period it covers, how many shipments are involved, or how the Rs. 18.3 billion divides. It does not say whether the figure supersedes the Rs. 17.965 billion of 8 October or measures something different, and it gives no government response.
This desk could not find a second verified newsroom carrying the Rs. 18.3 billion figure at the time of writing. Ada Derana could not be fetched — its CloudFront block on this host is in its thirty-second day. A search returned a Parliament news item on this committee reviewing imported coal, but that item dates from January 2026 and concerns a different meeting; this committee reviews coal repeatedly, and its notices are easily mistaken for one another.
Update, 20 October: the government answers — on the blackout, not on the Rs 18.3 billion
The government has rejected the claim that substandard coal caused the Norochcholai failure behind the 17 October islandwide blackout, Cabinet Spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa said, the Daily Mirror reported at 4.32 p.m. on Tuesday.
This is the first government response on the record in this story, and the section above noted its absence. It should be read carefully, because it answers a different question from the one Marikkar’s figure poses.
The denial, and its basis
Jayatissa said Generator Unit 1 remains out of service following the technical failure, but rejected claims linking the incident to coal quality. His argument is a timeline:
- The unit was shut down for maintenance for 62 days, from 30 July to 30 September.
- Coal from a new shipment has been used for power generation since 4 September.
“There is no link between the coal quality and this incident, as the coal being used since September 4 is from new shipments,” he said.
The 62-day figure checks out exactly against the dates given — 31 July, 31 August and 30 September total 62 days. That is the kind of internal consistency worth confirming rather than assuming.
What the denial does and does not cover
The claim being rebutted is D.V. Chanaka’s, reported on this desk on 19 October: that substandard coal caused the blackout. Jayatissa’s answer is that the coal in use since 4 September is from new shipments, and so cannot be the suspect consignment.
It does not address Marikkar’s Rs 18.3 billion at all. That figure is a cumulative accounting of losses from substandard shipments and the replacement electricity bought because of them — a historical total, not a cause of the 17 October failure. The government has now denied a causal link to one event while leaving the cost claim unanswered.
One point in the spokesman’s own timeline invites a question no filing puts to him. If Unit 1 was under maintenance from 30 July to 30 September, then coal used “for power generation since September 4” was being burned at the plant’s other units while Unit 1 was still down. That does not contradict the denial — the point is about which coal is in the system — but it means the new shipments were not powering Unit 1 for most of the period cited.
On the losses
Asked about the financial losses caused by the blackout, Jayatissa said the opposition was calculating them and was expected to release its figures next week. That is a deferral rather than a government estimate, and it suggests another number is due within days.
On sourcing. This update brings the article to two filings, both from the Daily Mirror. Under this site’s credibility rules multiple filings from one outlet count as a single newsroom, so the article remains single-newsroom; the second filing is added because it carries the government’s reply, which the first lacked.
