Southern Sri Lanka facing rice shortage

While the Tamil-speaking north is being subjected to a full-scale war with night air raids, the predominantly Sinhalese-speaking south is facing a severe rice shortage and the highest rate of inflation in the history of Sri Lanka.

According to the Colombo Consumer Price Index (CCPI), the current rate of inflation in Sri Lanka is a dizzying 24 per cent. Even the revised index (CCPIN) estimates it at 21.6 per cent. On both counts, it is significantly higher than in other countries in the region, where the rates of inflation vary between 5 per cent and 7 per cent.

The Island daily reported on Thursday that this year, the average increase in the price of rice varieties in Sri Lanka is 68 per cent. For example, the price of parboiled imported Indian rice has gone up from SLRs.40 to SLRs. 85 per kg in only a few weeks. Prices are expected to further rise because of an increasing local shortage due to bad weather, unwise import policies and increasing world prices.

Timely imports from neighboring India would have saved the country from the present plight, a knowledgeable trade source told this website’s newspaper. The government should have placed orders with foreign suppliers (ideally from India) when prices were low and a rise was on the cards, he said.

Interference in private trade by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in recent times has harmed the economy and social welfare, traders said, as they shut down Colombo’s wholesale market on Thursday in protest against the new, uneconomical administered prices.

Rise in food prices is worrying because food accounts for 80 per cent of household expenditure in Sri Lanka. An average family has to spend as much as SLRs.4,000 ($37) per month on rice alone, making it unaffordable. Many may have to resort to cutting down on food, but this will only worsen the already worrying nutritional status of the population.

According to the Department of Census and Statistics, only half of Sri Lanka’s total population of 20 million receives the minimum daily intake of 2,030 calories. The actual intake is 1,696 calories per day in the case of the poor, and 2,194 in the case of others.

The Rajapaksa government proudly proclaims that Sri Lanka has a per capita income of US$1,599. But according to the UNICEF, 14 per cent of children under the age of five show signs of wasting or acute undernourishment, and 29 per cent are underweight.

The government this week began forcing traders to sell at prices it had fixed. But this is causing an enormous loss to trade. The controlled price of a 65-kg sack of “samba” rice is now SLRs.4030, but the purchase price is SLRs.5400, traders point out.

Source: newindpress