Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe - Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Co-operative Development
The Minister said Sri Lanka has 26 domestic canned fish manufacturers with capacity far above local demand, producing over 500,000 tins daily against demand of about 180,000. He noted industry concerns over raw fish imports, tin supplies and VAT, but said VAT had not placed local producers at an undue disadvantage. He stated that Maximum Retail Prices of Rs. 380, Rs. 420 and Rs. 517 were introduced at manufacturers’ request, keeping domestic canned fish competitive against imported tins landing above Rs. 520.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Please keep supplementaries to rice; however, I will briefly address canned fish since you raised it.
¶ 02 There are 26 domestic canned fish manufacturers with a daily production capacity exceeding 500,000 tins (425g). Domestic demand is around 180,000 tins per day. Issues faced included imported fish raw material availability, tin supplies and VAT. VAT applies broadly to domestic products under the law; however, this has not created an undue disadvantage. On manufacturers’ request, we introduced Maximum Retail Prices (MRP) of Rs. 380, Rs. 420 and Rs. 517 for three product variants, ensuring affordability. Imported canned fish lands above Rs. 520 per tin, so domestic products remain competitive. Accordingly, consumers can obtain a tin at Rs. 380 under the MRP framework.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Tuesday, 25 February 2025 ·No. 1741258607035810 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe - Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Co-operative Development. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 25 February 2025. No. 1741258607035810. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/26577