The media shift their focus to the next crisis and the protesters would lose their audience and attention of the authorities. Typical of the mindset of the Sri Lankan consumers, every time there is a price hike there will be protests and many high-level discussions and news reports, which fizzle out in a few weeks at most. 35.00 for a 13.5 kg cylinder has now ballooned up to Rs 2,850.00 for a 12.5 kg cylinder, an 88-fold increase. Our problems of shortage of foreign exchange was present even those days although not as critical as now. The fact remains that yet another import was promoted blindly with total lack of vision on the possible future impacts on many fronts. Let us not delve into the background and the later events which occurred. This may have been an attractive commercial opportunity opening the way even for international petroleum giant, Shell, to move in. The fault lies in expanding and promoting the use of LPG way beyond the local production possible from our refinery and resorting to imports over which we have absolutely no control. Limited to that level of availability and use, there can be no objection to this decision. The advent of LPG as a cooking fuel goes back to the 1970 decade when the LPG from our refinery was being flared off without any productive use. Instead, the consumers are now in a worse situation when the very safety of use is in doubt. Perhaps, with one of the suppliers of LPG being a private company, the current LPG prices may not include any subsidies. 5.00 or more per unit without it being reflected in the monthly bill. But the present safety issue cannot be swept under the carpet.įor example, to cover the continuing losses by the CEB, running close to a hundred billion rupees in some years, even the consumers at the lowest consumption levels are paying an extra Rs. While the impact on areas like electricity and transport fuels by this over-dependence on imported fossil fuels are kept under wraps by the authorities by high levels of subsidies, which keep the consumers in a state of false euphoria and leading them to believe that their interests are looked after and thus live in a fool’s paradise. “Wallowing in the Fossil Fuel Trap” in The Island, where I dealt with the entire spectrum of energy,

As recently as August 2021, I published an article titled. Past President Bio Energy Association of Sri LankaĬlose on the heels of the grave hit on the wallet of consumers due to the hefty hike in the LPG prices, a new crisis by way of safety of use of even the expensive gas has created an even greater problem.

Cabinet vision 11 price