10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Mujibur Rahuman

Samagi Jana Balawegaya· Colombo· 18 December 2024 ·Debate: Debate: Supplementary Estimate – Head 102, Programme 01 (School Supplies Grant)

Cost of LivingAgriculture
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Hon. Mujibur Rahuman questioned the Government’s rice import policy and price controls, noting that imported rice costing about Rs. 150 per kilo in India becomes about Rs. 215 after taxes when landed in Sri Lanka. He asked how traders could sell white Kekulu and Nadu rice at the controlled price of Rs. 220 per kilo after accounting for transport and other costs.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Thank you. We know that rice is now being brought from abroad to control the prices in our market and to provide rice to the people at low prices. You have set the controlled price of white Kekulu rice at Rs. 220 per kilo. Nadu rice controlled price is Rs. 220 per kilo. If we take the average prices in India, importers have to pay around Rs. 150 per kilo in Sri Lankan rupees. Then you levy around Rs. 65 as tax. Accordingly, when landing in Sri Lanka the rice costs Rs. 215 per kilo. So when it leaves the port its price is Rs. 215. You are saying to sell at the controlled price of Rs. 220. Then who pays the transport cost? Please answer after I conclude.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Wednesday, 18 December 2024 ·No. 1735286612086554 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/12234

Cite as: The Hon. Mujibur Rahuman. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 18 December 2024. No. 1735286612086554. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/12234