Sri Lanka Customs collected Rs 202.7 billion in October against a target of Rs 193.3 billion, beating it by 4.9%, with revenue over the first ten months of 2026 running about 15.9% ahead of the same period last year.
Cumulative revenue for January to October reached Rs 2,336 billion, EconomyNext reported, citing official data.
The October result follows this desk’s report at the start of the month that Customs had entered its tenth month already ahead of target, and continues a run of monthly beats that included July and the seventh straight month.
On course for a second record
Customs set itself a target of Rs 2,207 billion for 2026 — 13.5% lower than last year, on the expectation of a significant decline in car imports.
Last year it collected a record Rs 2,551 billion, against a revised target of Rs 2,241 billion, and 64.2% more than the previous year. With Rs 2,336 billion banked in ten months, the department has already passed this year’s full-year target with two months to run, and analysts quoted in the report expect a fresh record.
Two figures that do not agree
The report gives the ten-month overperformance twice, with different numbers, and they cannot both be right.
One passage says Customs “exceeded the cumulative target for the first 10 months by 27.5 percent.” A later passage says it “achieved 8.3 percent more than this year’s target in the first 10 months.”
On the figures the report itself supplies, the first is the one that holds up. An evenly pro-rated ten-month share of the Rs 2,207 billion annual target is about Rs 1,839 billion; Rs 2,336 billion against that is roughly 27% above — close to the stated 27.5%. Measured against the full-year target instead, Rs 2,336 billion is about 5.8% above, which is not 8.3% either.
This desk cannot reconcile the 8.3% figure with any of the published numbers and has not used it above. The headline comparisons — the 4.9% October beat and the 15.9% year-on-year rise — are unaffected.
A third slip is worth flagging for anyone working from the original: the report gives the prior year’s revenue as “1,553 million rupees” where the context and the stated 64.2% increase both require Rs 1,553 billion. Its closing paragraph also describes Customs as a top Treasury revenue source “in 2025” in a story about 2026 collections.
Why collections are up
The report attributes the rise to stronger enforcement, improved valuation practices and a rebound in import volumes after years of contraction.
Imports fell sharply after the 2022 economic crisis, when restrictions were imposed to conserve foreign exchange. With reserves stabilised, some import controls relaxed and consumer demand recovering, collections from import duties, excise and other levies have risen. Officials also credit tighter monitoring of under-invoicing and misdeclaration of goods.
The combined effect, the report says, has made Customs one of the Treasury’s top revenue sources as the state works to meet fiscal targets under the IMF-supported programme — context that matters with the 2027 Budget due in Parliament on Thursday.
Not reported
The report gives no breakdown of October’s Rs 202.7 billion by duty type — import duty, excise, VAT on imports or other levies — and no vehicle-import figure, despite the annual target having been set on an expected fall in car imports. It does not say whether that expected decline has materialised.
It gives no monthly series for the year, no comparison of October against September, and no October 2025 figure, so the 15.9% year-on-year rise cannot be checked against the month in isolation. No Customs official is named or quoted, the “analysts” expecting a record are not identified, and the “official data” is not attributed to a named release.
A note on sourcing. Only EconomyNext had filed on the October figures at the time of writing, making this a single-source report. The underlying numbers are official Customs data rather than the newsroom’s own, but no second verified newsroom had carried them.
