The Hon. (Ms.) Lakmali Hemachandra, Attorney-at-Law
Hon. Lakmali Hemachandra said subsidies for farmers and fishers are intended not only to support incomes but also to control food prices and safeguard future food security. She stated that, in response to the current crisis and rising fuel and electricity costs, Aswesuma payments for April have been increased across beneficiary categories, including from Rs. 17,500 to Rs. 25,000. She contrasted this with the Government’s handling of earlier crises such as the Easter Sunday attacks and COVID-19, citing negative economic growth figures in 2019 and 2020.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Please allow me two minutes, Madam Deputy Chair.
¶ 02 We provide these subsidies not only thinking of farmers’ and fishers’ incomes, but to control food prices and ensure future food security.
¶ 03 In this period, the poor become poorer. The burden of buying fuel and paying electricity bills weighs more on them. Therefore, we have increased Aswesuma: Rs. 17,500 beneficiaries to Rs. 25,000; Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 15,000; and Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 7,500 — for April only — as a crisis response. In crises, Governments have a duty to protect the people. We are fulfilling that duty.
¶ 04 During the Easter Sunday attacks and the COVID pandemic, this country did not have a Government that protected the people. Today, such a Government exists — one that protects and takes responsibility for the people. In 2019, economic growth was -2.8%; in 2020, -4.6%.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 8 April 2026 ·No. 23474 ·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/995
Cite as: The Hon. (Ms.) Lakmali Hemachandra, Attorney-at-Law. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 8 April 2026. No. 23474. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/995