Minister Siyambalapitiya wants Lankans to eat less wheat

By Akitha Perera and Ranil Dharmasena

Sri Lanka imported over 70 million kilos of wheat in 2022, State Minister of Finance, Ranjith Siyambalapitiya told Parliament on Wednesday.

“Each Sri Lankan consumes about three kilos of wheat. We must reduce eating wheat and increase consumption of rice. We can save a lot of foreign exchange,” Siyambalapitiya said, adding that in 2020, Sri Lanka had imported 5,300 tonnes of rice. In 2021, over 135,000 tonnes of rice had been imported, he said.

“In 2022, we imported 730,000 tonnes of rice. We had to do this because our rice production dropped. However, we expect a good harvest this year and we have stopped rice imports,” he said.