The Committee on Public Finance has called for an independent regulatory mechanism for fuel pricing, after officials set out the differences in landing costs between the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and private importers.
The committee, chaired by SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva, heard that the CPC meets part of domestic demand from its own refinery, while private suppliers import all their refined product. Despite those different cost structures, private operators are required to price fuel at rates announced by the CPC, the Daily FT reported.
The committee said the arrangement could create competitive distortions, and called for a transparent pricing mechanism that accounts for import costs, taxes and distribution expenses.
Members also pressed for blanket fuel subsidies to be replaced with targeted assistance for low-income households and the public transport sector.
The structural problem in one sentence
A refiner and an importer do not have the same cost of goods. Requiring both to sell at a single administered price means the margin differs by operator at every price revision — so the same pump price is profitable for one and loss-making for the other, with the direction depending on where crude and refined product prices sit relative to each other.
That is the mechanism behind a run of recent disputes. This desk reported last week that the Energy Ministry was seeking legal advice on private operators’ 20-year pricing agreements after Sinopec and RM Parks cut distribution, with the state absorbing an 80-90 per cent rise in world prices. Opposition figures have separately argued over the CPC’s profit margin relative to private retailers, and Verité Research found in early November that pump prices were below cost recovery.
The committee’s answer — take the pricing decision out of the hands of a market participant and give it to a regulator — addresses the conflict of interest directly: at present the CPC both competes in the market and sets the price its competitors must charge.
The same meeting, five days earlier
The filing reports the committee reviewing regulations issued under the Imports and Exports (Control) Act through Extraordinary Gazette No. 2508/27 of 1 October 2026, proposed standards for imported vehicle tyres, and changes to the Aswesuma welfare programme.
That identifies the sitting. It is the 5 November meeting at which, as this desk reported at the time, MPs warned the tyre import rules could hand a windfall to one or two dominant manufacturers because officials had gazetted them without studying market shares. The fuel-pricing discussion was a separate item on the same agenda, and the Daily FT filed it five days later.
Not reported
The filing gives no figures for the landing-cost gap it says the committee examined, and names no private importer. It does not say what model of regulator is proposed, which body would house it, whether primary legislation would be needed, or on what timetable. It does not record a government or CPC response, say whether the committee has made a formal recommendation or merely expressed a view, or set out what the targeted subsidy would replace the current arrangement with.
No other verified newsroom had carried the fuel-pricing item from this meeting at the time of writing.
