Govt ensured stable prices during festive season

Although increasing prices of food and other essential commodities is a normal phenomenon observed during festive seasons, prices remained at a stable level this Sinhala and Tamil New Year season due to the salutary steps taken by the government to keep prices at affordable levels.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa

This was revealed at a meeting of the Ministerial Sub Committee on Food Security and Cost of Living presided by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees yesterday.

A press release by the President’s media division said the price level and tendencies during the last month were discussed at length during this meeting.

It was observed that the price of all varieties of rice remained stable while there had been a drop in the prices of eggs and fish.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa who said that there is an increased production cost in vegetables pointed out that methods such as dehydration should be introduced for the long term preservation of vegetables. The committee also paid attention to the continuous escalation in the prices of milk food and crude oil in the world market.

The present situation of the fisheries industry and its future tendencies were also discussed at this meeting. It was observed that the fish production during the first quarter of this year had increased by 4,000 metric tons when compared with the corresponding period last year.

All illegal methods of fishing had also been banned and all this had helped to bring down the price of fish.

The ministers also thanked President Rajapaksa and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for the assistance rendered in resolving the problem at the Peliyagoda New Fish market complex.

Ministers Dr Rajitha Senaratne, Johnston Fernando, Nimal Siripala de Silva, Mahinda Yapa Abeyewardane, C B Ratnayake and Geethanjana Gunawardena, Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga and other officials attended the meeting.