20 November 2021 12:00 am Views - 68
By Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera
While asserting that no injustice has been caused to the consumers due to the removal of control price on essential commodities, Minister Lasantha Alagiyawanna said yesterday prices of several items have reduced after the removal of price control.
He told Parliament that control price on certain essential commodities was imposed with a genuine intention to benefit the consumers and that they admit that it was not successful.
“We imposed a control price to see if it would benefit the consumers. We did it with a genuine intention. We admit that we couldn’t do it,” he said.
The Minister said they removed control price with provisions for state intervention if any injustice was caused to the consumers.
“We can see a positive outcome after removing price control. Prices of sugar have dropped to Rs. 125 per kilo now. A kilo of bulk price for sugar was around 200 when price control was in effect. The shortage of cement is also returning to normalcy now,” he said.