Prices of essential commodities very high

The prices of essential commodities are very high making life difficult fort the people, said Joint Opposition Parliamentarian Bandula Gunawardena in Parliament yesterday.

He made these observations yesterday, during the Committee Stage Debate on the budget proposal for the financial year 2018 under the financial heads of Industry and Commerce Ministry, Rural Economic Affairs Ministry and Public Enterprise Development Ministry.

He said that the prices of rice, onions, vegetables and coconuts had increased unprecedentedly.

He said that the prices of petrol in the world market dropped in 2015 creating a fair environment for the good governance government to run the economy soundly. He said that the previous government had to pay USD 5 billion for the import of fossil fuel. “With the drop of the fuel price in the world market, this government had to pay only USD 2.5 billion,” MP Bandula Gunawardena said. “Usually when we take a loan of USD 1.5 billion from the IMF, what we got from the Hambantota Port Transaction was USD 1 Billion.”

He said that the USD 4.3 billion saved during the last two years is no more.