Enough paddy stocks to face contingency:

No need to panic

Irangika RANGE

Co-operatives and Internal Trade Minister Johnston Fernando said that adequate rice and vegetable stocks will be released to the market to avoid any shortage caused by the effects of rainy weather.

Minister Fernando addressing the media-briefing held in Colombo yesterday said that over 200,000 metric tonnes of paddy is stored at warehouses owned by the Paddy Marketing Board across the country.

Nearly 800,000 metric tonnes of paddy surplus thanks to the bumper paddy harvest during the the previous Yala and Maha seasons have been stored in these warehouses as buffer stocks, he said.

These paddy will be milled into rice and will be distributed through Sathosa and Lak Sathosa outlets to meet the national requirement, the Minister said.

He said that nearly 350,000 acres of paddy fields have been destroyed due to the floods caused by heavy rains. But, we do not expect any rice shortage as adequate supplies keep coming to the market.

The Minister said that private sector traders too have sufficient stocks in their warehouses.

"I have instructed Ministry officials to purchase adequate vegetable stocks cultivated in Government owned farms in the country to distribute them through Sathosa outlets across the country to consumers at concessionary rates.

There are reports of a shortage of vegetables in the market owing to torrential rains damaging a lot of vegetable crops in the country.

But this problem will be sorted out within the next few days with the deployment of Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (CWE) trucks, to transport vegetables from islandwide farmers and distribute them through Sathosa and Lak Sathosa branches to consumers," the Minister said.