While asserting that no injustice has been done to the consumers due to the removal of control price on essential commodities, Minister Lasantha Alagiyawanna said today that the prices of several items have come down 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. But, 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 kg now. A kg of bulk price for sugar was around Rs. 200 when price control was in effect. The shortage of cement is also returning to normalcy now,” he said.(Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera)