The government is preparing to ease the import of temporarily suspended goods on priority basis.
Minister of State for Finance Mr. Ranjith Siambalapitiya points out that taking into consideration the demands presented, further relaxation of import restrictions will be done in the future.
Mr. Siambalapitiya said that the government hopes to relax the import restrictions to enable the import of raw materials needed for local industries as well as protecting the reserves.
He pointed out that import restrictions were imposed on the relevant goods on the basis that they could be produced locally or were not essential.
The minister also said:
“Debt reserves are at a very low level. People need money for the import of essential items like gas, fuel, health and medicine. Therefore, we wanted to create a priority list. This was recommended by the Economic Research Division of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and accordingly a gazette announcement was issued.
There are things that are imported that are not really necessary. We imported kites, we brought kites from abroad in the country where there is no medicine.
We stopped 1455 items from the gazette notification issued on August 23 and we had to stop these. Later, taking into consideration the requests of various parties including Chambers of Commerce, the import restrictions of 708 items were removed,” the minister said.
“We should increase exports and limit imports. This ban was created with the shortage of dollars. We hope to relax these after reconsideration.
Those required by the industry sector have been exempted. Due to the necessity of agriculture and exports, these relaxations are done by a committee looking from the country’s perspective. Apart from this, we also worked to remove the restrictions imposed on visually impaired devices,” the minister said.