The Hon. Anura Karunathilaka
The Minister rejected the claim that the Government is constrained by the IMF and said renewable energy curtailment is carried out only for technical system-stability reasons, affecting ground-mounted solar farms rather than rooftop solar. He stated that any tariff impact from exchange rate movements or Middle East tensions would mainly affect consumers using over 180 units, with Rs. 15 billion allocated to the National System Operator to cushion other users. He added that the Government does not expect to request a PUCSL-approved tariff increase before September.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Member, your premise that the Government fears the IMF is incorrect. On curtailment, as I stated, any curtailment is for technical reasons, not to limit RE. System stability requires a certain share of synchronous generation; if supply exceeds demand, we cannot control the system. Any curtailment targets ground-mounted solar farms; rooftop solar is not curtailed and, in fact, cannot be curtailed technically.
¶ 02 Regarding tariff hikes due to dollar movements and Middle East tensions, we have clearly stated that any increase mainly affects consumers using above 180 units. The Government has provided Rs. 15 billion to the NSO to bear the burden for others. As a direct answer: we do not expect to request a tariff increase from the PUCSL before September.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 21 May 2026 ·No. 23621 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/7326
Cite as: The Hon. Anura Karunathilaka. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 21 May 2026. No. 23621. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/7326