Sri Lanka will not face a rice shortage until the upcoming Maha cultivation season, with the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) holding close to 140,000 metric tonnes of red and white rice stocks, Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe said on Sunday.
The Minister said arrangements have been made to import sufficient quantities of substitute rice varieties to meet demand and prevent shortages, with only substitute varieties — and not headline samba or keeri samba — to be imported this year. The policy is designed to stabilise prices while protecting both producers and consumers, he told Ada Derana.
Samarasinghe attributed the recent rise in rice prices largely to a shortage of keeri samba, the country’s most prestigious variety, which has driven up household cost-of-living readings since April. The Pettah wholesale market saw samba prices drop after Indian imports arrived earlier in the cycle, and the Consumer Affairs Authority has continued a string of keeri samba MRP raids on traders island-wide.
The 140,000 MT PMB stockpile is the first publicly disclosed cumulative figure since the Cabinet approved the sale of 115,000 MT of paddy to mills before the Yala harvest came in, and follows the Minister’s June 3 disclosure that 120,000 MT of substitute samba and keeri samba varieties were imported in April.
On the upcoming Maha season, Samarasinghe said preparations are underway to import fertilizer required for the larger of the country’s two annual paddy cycles. The fertilizer subsidy has been raised to Rs. 30,000 per hectare, up Rs. 5,000 from the prior rate, with 502,836 farmers eligible across the country.
The Minister also addressed the wider macroeconomic picture, saying the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has created challenges in the energy sector but that the government would not allow the economy to collapse and would continue efforts to strengthen export earnings and the tourism industry while maintaining foreign exchange stability.
