Round wire gadgets to check coconut sizes and enforce control prices

Consumer Affairs Authority officials armed with improvised measuring gadgets will be deployed to check on the sizes of coconuts to implement the latest gazette notification on price control, a senior official said.

Consumer Affairs Authority Chairman and retired Major General D.M.S. Dissanayake told the Sunday Times that district offices had been adviced to measure the circumference of coconuts to determine if they were being sold at the controlled prices gazetted on Friday.

The gazette notification said a coconut with a circumference of 13 inches and above could be sold at a maximum price of Rs 70, a coconut between 12 and 13 inch circumferance at Rs 65 and a coconut below 12-inch circumference at Rs 60.

He said CAA officers had been told to prepare round wire frames according to the sizes which had been gazetted and check whether coconuts were being sold at the controlled prices.

The move came as coconut prices shot up to more than Rs 100 a nut with some consumers being able to buy only half a coconut.

Meanwhile, Coconut Cultivators' Association members have met Plantations Minister Ramesh Pathirana to discuss the demand by desiccated coconut millers to import frozen coconut kernel from the Philippines.

The association's president, Jayantha Samarakoon, said the stocks if imported would take five months to reach the country and by that time there would be enough production to meet the required demand.

Last year, Sri Lanka produced 3,085.6 million coconuts, according to a Central Bank report.