The Hon. Namal Karunaratne
Family labour was included in maize cost calculations, with Rs. 106 per kilogram given as the average cost and district-level variations acknowledged. A 30 per cent margin was added to set a Rs. 135 per kilogram price, agreed by the Task Force with farmer organisations and experts led by Prof. Buddhi Marambe. He said farmers generally received good prices, while problems mainly affected intermediaries who had stockpiled, and noted that projected imports had fallen from about 253,000 metric tons last year to 67,000 metric tons this year, with a plan to progressively reduce maize imports to zero.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Member, family labour was included in the cost calculations. The Rs. 106/kg is an average; district figures vary. Adding a 30% margin leads to Rs. 135/kg, agreed upon by the Task Force with farmer organisations and experts led by Prof. Buddhi Marambe.
¶ 02 As for price issues, generally farmers obtained good prices; difficulties largely affected intermediaries who stockpiled. Regarding imports, last year imports were about 253,000 MT; this year we project only 67,000 MT, with a small quantity imported so far. Our demand is about 700,000 MT, 90% for feed. Our goal is to progressively reduce imports to zero; we have a scientific plan underway.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 23 September 2025 ·No. 1758876121024768 ·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/15538
Cite as: The Hon. Namal Karunaratne. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 23 September 2025. No. 1758876121024768. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/15538