‘Swarna’ vs Dudley

Friday 8th October, 2021

The government has made another U-turn. That’s no news, though. Perhaps, it has set a world record for volte-face. Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Althugamage declared, the other day, that the government would not import rice as the country had enough stocks thereof. He bragged that the government was capable of making rice freely available at reasonable prices without rice imports. Not many bought into his claim. Despite his braggadocio, the Cabinet has reportedly decided to import rice from India and sell it at Rs. 98 a kilo, we are told. The rice to be imported is called ‘Swarna’, according to media reports. Will the government be able to tame Dudley Sirisena and other big-time rice millers on the warpath, with the help of ‘Swarna’?

The government is said to be planning to import as much as 100,000 MT of Indian rice. It is spending a large amount of forex on rice imports while the country’s foreign reserves are dwindling. Its logic defies comprehension. It has imposed import restrictions on many other commodities to save foreign exchange. It has even banned turmeric imports purportedly to promote the local turmeric production. But it is importing rice although there are enough stocks of locally produced paddy if the Agriculture Minister’s claim is anything to go by. What actually caused a shortage of rice and price increases is the impotence of the rulers, who are too scared to make the Millers’ Mafia release hoarded paddy to the market at prices stipulated by the government. In other words, the government is spending foreign currency on rice imports to cover up its impotence. What an expensive face-saving exercise!

What will happen when the imported rice arrives here is not difficult to predict. The Millers’ Mafia will release some more rice to the market and bring down prices, as they have done in the past. Sri Lankans prefer locally produced rice to imported varieties, whose quality is of little concern to those who place import orders; politicians and their bureaucratic lackeys are concerned only about one thing—kickbacks. Imported rice will remain unsold in Sathosa warehouses, when local rice is available at lower prices. This, we have seen umpteen times during the past so many years. There is also no guarantee that part of the imported rice will not find its way into the warehouses of private traders, the way two freight containers of garlic did a few weeks ago. Anything is possible in a den of thieves like Sathosa, where crooks go places and honest officials are smoked out. The media has exposed several rackets where rice imported by Sathosa was sold to private companies even before it reached the Colombo Port!

One way of preventing the exploitation by big millers of consumers and farmers is to provide state assistance to small and medium rice mills, whose owners have squared up to the Millers’ Mafia, which jacked up rice prices after flooring the government; they have undertaken to sell rice at lower prices. They have shown the way. They deserve encouragement and assistance. It is up to the government to look after the interests of these men and women while developing the Paddy Marketing Board to the level of being able to make effective market interventions for the benefit of farmers and consumers. Mere rhetoric will not do. What needs to be done must be done. There is no other way.

The small and medium mills receive stepmotherly treatment from banks, which favour the Miller’s Mafia, and the government ought to intervene to help them obtain loans without undue delays. The government leaders should be able to do so if they are not in the pay of the Millers’ Mafia.

As for helping bring down rice prices, we believe, ‘Swarna’ stands the same chance as a cat in hell vis-à-vis the powerful cartel of rapacious rice millers who are strong enough to humble even the Executive, as we have seen over the past so many years. The incumbent government too has chosen to bark up the wrong tree for political reasons, and waste foreign exchange on rice imports.