Sri Lanka sets up food security committee amid $220 rice tax, import licensing

Sri Lanka
By Editor_1
Many people in Sri Lanka are struggling to afford food as prices rise -ISHARA S. KODIKARA/AFP

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka has set up a committee to ensure food security and nutritional safety, even as food freedoms are constrained by high import taxes and licensing to give profits to producers and keep food prices artificially high.

A government statement announcing Monday’s (9) Cabinet decisions said the prime objective of the government is to establish national food and nutrition safety and provide the food requirement of every person in quality and quantity at an affordable price.

Sri Lanka taxes most foods at unusually high rates to give profits to farmers, collectors and millers, undermining the food freedoms of the poor in particular.

Sri Lanka taxes rice at 65000 rupee tax per tonne or around 222 US dollars a tonne at the current exchange rate. Consequently, rice in Sri Lanka retails at around 750 dollars a tonne compared to export prices of around 450 to 470 dollars (about 140 rupees) for similar grades of rice, or about 50% higher than the rest of the world.

Sri Lanka rice prices have increased in recent months, even as global prices dropped and there are shortfalls amid price controls.

Sri Lanka also taxes maize imports, a key ingredient for poultry and dairy productions, keeping protein prices artificially high and hurting children of poor families in particular, critics have said.

A series of other cereals and also potatoes are taxed to give profits to farmers in tax regimes promoted by past administrations.

Sri Lanka has created a number of oligopolies in rice and maize collectors (generally referred to as mafia in local parlance) with the help of import taxes and a food license raj.

Food imports are controlled based on an economic nationalism or ‘self-sufficiency’ ideology or for import substitution to ‘save foreign exchange’.

-economynext.com

Editor_1
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