Trade Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe told Parliament’s Advisory Committee on Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development on Wednesday that the government is considering rice imports based on national requirement, even as paddy farmers in Anuradhapura threatened to march on Colombo over the policy.
Samarasinghe said 120,000 metric tonnes of substitute rice varieties for samba and keeri samba were imported in April, according to the Parliamentary Communications Department. The Co-operative Wholesale Establishment has been involved in purchasing paddy for milling and is also procuring potatoes at Rs.220 per kilogram for distribution through SATHOSA outlets. The CWE has separately allocated Rs.1 billion to upgrade paddy drying and storage facilities.
The political pushback was immediate. Farmers’ representatives at the same committee said paddy growers are facing serious difficulties, with rising fuel costs adding to the pressure. Anuradhapura District Farmers’ Association Chairman Sunil Rajapaksha told the committee farmers plan to bring protesters to Colombo over what he described as the adverse impacts of government policy on the agriculture sector. Several other associations echoed the same complaint.
The exchange marks the second time in two weeks that import policy and farmer grievance have collided in a public forum. The Pettah wholesale market saw samba prices drop after Indian imports arrived, while Anuradhapura’s Galenbindunuwewa farmers staged a fertiliser-and-paddy protest in mid-May. The Paddy Marketing Board has separately been given cabinet approval to sell 115,000 MT of paddy to mills before the Yala harvest comes in.
The government has not yet announced volumes or origin for any further rice imports, and no formal protest date has been set.
