The Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) has begun purchasing paddy from the 2026 Yala harvest, opening collection centres in the districts recording the heaviest yields.
PMB Chairman Manjula Pinnalanda said buying would start where harvesting is furthest along, with the Northern, Eastern and Ampara districts — where large-scale harvesting is already under way — the first to be covered.
The board has set guaranteed prices of Rs. 120 per kilogram for Nadu paddy, Rs. 130 for Samba and Rs. 140 for Keeri Samba this season. Purchases will be handled through 143 storage facilities across the country, with the Department of Agrarian Development overseeing procurement.
The government has allocated Rs. 6 billion to the PMB for the programme, supplemented by an additional Rs. 10 billion overdraft loan facility. The board said the scheme would also allow small and medium-scale rice mill owners to build up their own paddy stocks.
Guaranteed-price purchasing is intended to shield farmers from having to sell below cost when harvests peak and market prices dip. It follows earlier government support for the season, including a 75% fertiliser subsidy for Yala cultivation, and comes after the PMB said in June it held sufficient buffer stocks to prevent any rice shortage.
Ahead of the season’s roll-out, Parliament’s Ministerial Consultative Committee on Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation — chaired by Minister K.D. Lal Kantha — met on July 8 to weigh new safeguards against fraud in the purchasing scheme, NewsFirst reported. Members discussed steps to ensure only genuine farmers can sell at the guaranteed price and to stop traders posing as cultivators, part of a wider effort to protect the fair price paid to growers. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Namal Karunaratne confirmed the Nadu, Samba and Keeri Samba prices as buying got under way.
Update (July 14): Cabinet Spokesman Minister Nalinda Jayatissa said the government aims to buy a total of 39,500 metric tonnes of paddy under the programme, with purchases capped for now at 2,500 kilograms per farmer — a limit officials said could be raised or lowered as the season progresses. On the opening day the PMB bought 25 tonnes of paddy worth about Rs. 3 million through 148 collection centres, Jayatissa told the weekly Cabinet media briefing. He added that the government would lease private storage facilities on a temporary basis if the board’s own capacity proved insufficient.
