--By LeN Economic Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -23.May.2025, 11.30 PM) If you’ve ever had the distinct pleasure of navigating the neon chaos of a Sri Lankan supermarket—or the altogether more primal experience of ducking into a corner kade (local grocery shop)—you’ll know that buying a chocolate bar can feel like placing a bet on the Colombo Stock Exchange. Yesterday’s price was Rs. 200. Today? Rs. 380, if you’re lucky. The next village over? Maybe Rs. 450. Welcome to the retail roulette of Sri Lanka, where price tags are more myth than policy, and consumers are consistently dealt the losing hand.
It is a cruel irony that in a country with such an acute inflation crisis, no one really seems to know what anything should actually cost. This isn’t just bad economics—it’s an avoidable tragedy engineered by the refusal to implement the simplest reform: mandatory manufacturer-printed retail prices on all consumer goods.
Unlike in India, Malaysia, or even Bangladesh, where Maximum Retail Prices (MRPs) are printed clearly on nearly every consumable item, Sri Lanka is a curious case of laissez-faire lunacy. With no regulatory requirement to standardize retail pricing at the point of production, manufacturers hand off their goods into a wild-west marketplace, where retailers gleefully slap on arbitrary markups, especially in rural towns and tourist-heavy zones.
Take a bottle of branded shampoo. Bought wholesale at Rs. 500, it might land on a shop shelf in Colombo at Rs. 750. But drive out to a smaller town, and you might find it brazenly priced at Rs. 1,200. No quality difference, no change in cost of transport—just retail avarice, unchained and unchecked.
According to a 2024 survey by the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA), over 62% of staple FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) items were being sold with markups exceeding 100% from their wholesale value in districts outside Colombo and Kandy. In some towns, the prices fluctuated up to 180% higher depending on the retailer’s mood, greed, or proximity to a foreign backpacker with a rucksack full of rupees.
Who bears the burden? Not the importer. Not the retailer. It’s the working class—Sri Lanka’s vast underpaid and overburdened majority. For the average family earning between Rs. 50,000–70,000 per month, every trip to the grocery store is a soul-sapping exercise in defeat.
A government schoolteacher from Matara told The Times: “I bought baby formula for Rs. 3,200 two months ago. Last week, it was Rs. 5,100. When I asked the shop owner, he just shrugged. ‘That's the new price,’ he said. There’s no label, no official price to argue with. How do I prove he’s cheating me?”
The problem transcends inconvenience—it fuels inflation. When there is no ceiling to the price a retailer can charge, market discipline collapses. Unscrupulous traders hoard goods, drip-feed them to the market, and justify astronomical price tags under the vague banner of “supply issues.” Price manipulation becomes not an anomaly, but a business model.
Foreign tourists, already paying inflated hotel taxes and “foreigner fees” at national parks, are increasingly reporting being gouged at the local level too. A German backpacker recently posted on Reddit: “Bought a small bag of peanuts for Rs. 1,000 in Ella. Realised later it sells for Rs. 300 in Colombo. No price label. I just assumed it was imported or fancy or something. Turns out I just got ripped off.”
When tourists get cheated, Sri Lanka loses something more valuable than a few rupees: its credibility. A country banking on tourism recovery post-2022 economic collapse cannot afford to run a retail sector that behaves like a carnival scam booth.
Here lies the heart of the solution. In nearly every part of Asia with a halfway-functional consumer economy, manufacturers are legally compelled to print the retail price on their products. India mandates MRPs. Malaysia does. Vietnam. Indonesia. Even Nepal.
The logic is elementary: If the price is printed by the manufacturer, the retailer can’t charge whatever they like. It creates a visible, enforceable ceiling. And it builds consumer trust. Customers know what to expect, and retailers know what lines they can't cross.
In India, even luxury skincare products like Kiehl’s or L’Oreal carry a printed MRP, with very limited variation permitted. The printed price includes the entire supply chain's costs—manufacture, distribution, and retail markup. This forces price discipline at every level.
In Sri Lanka, by contrast, even essential goods like sugar, tea, milk powder, rice, and pharmaceuticals are sold without fixed visible prices. Retailers are essentially allowed to guess, gamble—or gouge.
Nowhere is the damage of this policy vacuum more egregious than in the pharmaceutical sector. With no pricing regulation on most imported drugs, pharmacies play God with pricing. One popular antihistamine retails at Rs. 90 in a major pharmacy in Colombo. In Jaffna, the same brand sells for Rs. 210.
Several local pharmacies have even been caught removing manufacturer-applied price stickers on Indian drug imports, allowing them to relabel and markup products as they see fit.
The health consequences are deadly. Low-income families are delaying treatment, splitting pills, or turning to unregulated online sellers—simply because the nearest pharmacy decided the retail price of a lifesaving drug should be double what it is elsewhere.
Price chaos is also what enables stockpiling cartels. Traders hoard items like gas canisters, cooking oil, baby milk, and washing powder, then re-release them during shortages at extortionate prices. The absence of a printed retail price means they can triple the price and blame the “market.” Government attempts to cap prices fail because there’s no printed evidence of what the price should’ve been in the first place.
This is where the newly installed National People’s Power (NPP) government can strike a meaningful blow for working people. Amid sweeping economic reforms, this is the low-hanging fruit: mandate manufacturer-printed retail prices on all consumer goods and pharmaceuticals.
This isn’t socialist overreach—it’s capitalist clarity. No more backroom retail economics. No more shell games with pricing. A transparent system where everyone—from the wholesaler to the grandmother buying tea—knows what the cost is meant to be.
Minister of Trade and Consumer Protection Anushka Jayasinghe has hinted at regulatory reforms in this direction. “It’s time we stopped relying on goodwill and started relying on policy. Price transparency will help reduce market abuse,” she said in a recent parliamentary address.
Predictably, not everyone’s thrilled. Retailer associations argue that fixed MRPs will squeeze their margins, especially in remote areas where transport costs are higher.
But this is a solvable problem. Most countries allow a “zone-wise” MRP model, where manufacturers print variable MRPs based on region. What’s crucial is that every product still has a price printed on it—visible, traceable, and enforceable.
Moreover, honest retailers—especially supermarkets and online stores—are already demanding this reform. “We want a level playing field,” says Dinuka Samarasinghe, a manager at a leading grocery chain. “We play by the rules, keep reasonable margins, but we lose customers to roadside shops overpricing goods and then offering fake discounts.”
The government must move swiftly. The legislation required isn’t complex. Draft a Consumer Goods Pricing (Transparency) Act. Mandate printed MRPs on all non-perishable FMCGs, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and imported goods. Enforce it with surprise checks and stiff fines.
Importers and distributors must fall in line too. If India’s 1.4 billion-strong market can handle printed MRPs on everything from pens to paracetamol, surely Sri Lanka’s 22 million can manage the same.
In a country where public trust has worn paper-thin, price printing isn’t just a regulatory measure—it’s a promise. A promise that the government cares whether the rupee in your pocket still means something tomorrow.
Until that happens, every grocery trip in Sri Lanka will remain a game of chance, with the odds stacked not just against the consumer—but against common sense.
--By LeN Economic Correspondent
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by (2025-05-23 21:49:30)
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