Average Lankan estate resident debt-ridden, possibly malnourished in 2016: survey

Sri Lanka’s estate sector residents on average were in debt last year and possibly malnourished, spending more than they were earning mostly on non-food expenditure, according to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2016 of the Census and Statistics Department.

The average income in the estate sector was Rs.34,804, which accounted for both monetary income and non-monetary income of goods and services received in kind, and consumed within the survey period.

Expenditure on average amounted to Rs.34,851, of which Rs.17,961 was on non-food expenditure.

The government affiliated think tank, the Institute of Policy Studies, in a recent research, said that the expenditure required by a family in the estate sector for a low-cost nutritious diet was Rs.18,190 in 2015.

Prices of food products had gone up by 3.1 percent in 2016 on an annual average basis, according to the National Consumer Price Index. However, the HIES 2016 data showed that the estate sector spent just Rs.16,890 on food. Estate sector average income increased at the slowest pace of 15 percent between the HIES 2016 and HIES 2012/13, while the urban sector increase over the two survey periods was 27 percent to Rs.88,692, while in the rural sector the increase was 40 percent to Rs.58,137.