{"id":111508,"date":"2021-02-09T17:16:15","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T00:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111508"},"modified":"2021-02-09T17:16:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T00:16:15","slug":"from-two-measures-of-rice-to-cheap-dhal-sugar-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/09\/from-two-measures-of-rice-to-cheap-dhal-sugar-and-others\/","title":{"rendered":"FROM TWO MEASURES OF RICE TO CHEAP DHAL, SUGAR, AND OTHERS"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Mr.Bandula\nGunawardane, a minister of the government expressed in a recent press\nconference that the government has decided to reduce the prices of dhal\n(lentil), sugar, rice, and other several consumer items. He again stated in the\nparliament that the gazette notice has been canceled as no retailer sells goods\nfor a controlled price. &nbsp;Although the\nchanges of prices of consumer items should be based on the price mechanism the\ngovernment should get away from intervening in the determination of prices of\nconsumer items. Food shortages created during the second world war forced to\nsupply two measure of rice and in 1951 it became a political football and a\nserious protest in Sri Lanka under the leadership of Marxist parties conducted\nand Mr.Dudley Senanayake resigned from the Prime Minister position considering\nthe difficulty to face the issue.&nbsp; Rice\nhad been a political football till J.R.Jayawardane changed it to eight-pound of\ncereal grains before the election in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nargument of J.R after coming to power in 1977, was in an open market system not\nonly eight pounds, but more can purchase and he changed the policy with an\naccelerating Mahavelly project.&nbsp; Why\nagain cheap dhal (Lentil), sugar, and other consumer items came political\nplatform is difficult to understand and it shows that politicians in Sri Lanka\nmuch enjoy using the prices of consumer items than developing policies for\nsustainable development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nprices of consumer items are depending on various factors especially production\nand the quantity of supply. This is an automatic mechanism and the government\nshould not intervene in this price mechanism and if Mr.Gotabaya Rajapaksa\ndirect intervene making a production economy this type of retail issue will not\ncome to politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\ngovernment gives subsidies and cash allowances to lower-income earners. In such\na background, it is not necessary to intervene in determining the market prices\nand the role of the government is to educate people on how to determine\nconsumer prices. If the government creates competition among retail sellers\nprices will drop without government gazette notifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Politics\nis a short term matter and economics is long term behavior. What is Mr.Bandula\nGunawardane wants politics or economics?&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Mr.Bandula Gunawardane, a minister of the government expressed in a recent press conference that the government has decided to reduce the prices of dhal (lentil), sugar, rice, and other several consumer items. He again stated in the parliament that the gazette notice has been canceled as no retailer sells goods for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}