Vegetable supplies to the Katugastota Economic Centre have fallen by more than 50% as heavy rains disrupt cultivation, with the shortage pushing prices up sharply, traders at the Kandy-district wholesale centre said.
D.N. Silva, President of the centre’s Wholesale Traders’ Association, said a drop in upcountry vegetable production had led to a sharp decline in daily supplies, the Daily Mirror reported.
Continuous heavy rain had affected cultivation and reduced the quantity of vegetables reaching the centre by more than half, he said. The shortage has in turn caused prices to increase sharply.
Why this centre matters
Katugastota is one of the main wholesale collection points for upcountry vegetables — the hill-country crops such as carrots, leeks, beans and cabbage grown in the Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Badulla areas. A halving of volumes at a centre of that kind feeds through to retail markets well beyond the Central Province.
The weather behind it
The rains driving the shortfall are the same ones filling the country’s tanks. The Irrigation Department reported on Thursday that 17 major reservoirs and seven medium tanks were spilling or releasing water, with Nuwara Eliya district storage at 94.2% and Matale at 100% of effective capacity — a direct measure of how much rain has fallen on exactly the upcountry growing areas Silva describes.
Not reported
The filing gives no figures for the volumes involved, quotes no specific prices or percentage price increases, and does not say which vegetables are worst affected or how long the shortage is expected to last. It carries no comment from the Department of Agriculture, the Consumer Affairs Authority or any government body, and no indication of whether supplies to other economic centres — Dambulla, Meegoda or Thambuttegama — have been similarly affected. The report is attributed to Mohomad Asik; no other verified newsroom had carried it at the time of writing.