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

The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake

New Democratic Front· National List· 17 March 2026 ·Oral question: Oral Answers to Questions (Q.1 to Q.7 and Standing Order 27(2) questions)

Cost of LivingForeign Affairs
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Ravi Karunanayake raised concerns that exports appear to be declining, noting that a large share of exports to Europe relies on Middle East air freight carriers and that charges have doubled. He asked how the Government intends to support exporters’ competitiveness amid higher cargo costs and ongoing GSP-related issues, particularly for time-sensitive fish exports that risk being lost if not shipped promptly.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 My second supplementary: According to the table, exports too seem reduced. We export to Japan and Europe; about 65% to Europe goes by air freight on Middle East carriers. Air freight charges have increased by 100%. With GSP matters also in discussion, how will you help exporters remain competitive amid higher cargo costs? If fish cannot be exported promptly, consignments are lost.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 17 March 2026 ·No. 23387 ·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/2960

Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 17 March 2026. No. 23387. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/2960