Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera says that rice has to be imported because there is no rice reserve in the country.
He mentioned that if there was a reserve of rice, the paddy mill owners would not have the ability to determine the price of rice.
The minister also said:
“Even though we had a successful harvest last season, we have no rice reserves. I continuously requested from the treasury and also from the banks that if we kept a reserve, we would not want to surrender to rice mill owners. When they unnecessarily increased the price, we could have thrown out the rice. But we had no way to get money. We bought a small amount with the money from the Agricultural Trust Fund. I told them to send it to the market as paddy or rice as soon as possible. I don’t think that is enough to cover this deficit.”
