Rice gazetted as essential commodity

Irangika Range

The Government has decided to gazette rice as a essential commodity with immediate effect to provide relief to consumers in spite of the artificial rice price hike by errant traders.

Trade, Marketing Development, Co-operatives and Consumer Affairs Minister Bandula Gunawardana told the Daily News that rice has gazetted as an essential commodity under Section 18 of the Consumer Affairs Authority act,

This decision was taken to break the monopoly enjoyed by the traders. “We urged them not to create unnecessary rice shortage by hiding rice stock in the market,” he said.

By gazetting rice as an essential commodity, the Government expects to take legal action against errant traders who sell a kilo of rice at Rs.100 or above.

Minister said that some parties want to create political instability in the country by increasing prices of essential items unfairly. They want to create conspiracy in the country by putting the Government in difficulty.

Raids will be conducted by the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) throughout the island to nab errant traders who jacked up prices in defiance of the Government directive.

He said that the CAA is in the process of filing court cases against errant traders by taking a stringent approach towards the strict raids regarding the abuse of Consumer Affairs Act by concealing and selling rice at higher prices.

He said that fines are expected to be collected against errant traders who fleece consumers by creating unnecessary rice shortage following raids carried out on their businesses.

The CAA sends its officials and on the complaints received by public raids will be conducted islandwide.

These raids are been targeted traders selling rice at high prices, those not displaying price tags and price boards, traders who dupe consumers with dubious marketing tactics and not following the required standards.

He said this attempt at increasing rice prices by some traders is very unfair considering the prevailing trend of high rice flour consumption of consumers.

“We have imported 10,000 MT of rice from India and loading is going on in the Harbour.

Once the stock is released from the harbour, it will be distributed through the Sathosa and Co-operatives. This will reduce the prices in the open market,” Minister said.