Colombo, Oct 21 (FN Agency) Paddy stocks worth billions of rupees in storage facilities owned by the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) have vanished during the last decade in Sri Lanka, reports by the Auditor General have revealed. The Island newspaper on Friday quoted a senior PMB officer as saying that about 20 per cent of total paddy stored in the last decade have disappeared. The Auditor General has also found that the financial reports of the PMB have been consistently unreliable and that the institution has not taken a physical stock of the paddy held in their storage units. The Auditor General’s reports state that the weight of the paddy collected from the farmers might drop while in storage due to the loss of moisture in the paddy during the storage period, damage due to insects and other reasons, the daily said.
Even after taking these factors into consideration, there was no way of explaining how about 20 per cent of the total stock vanished, an unnamed senior officer was quoted as saying. The Auditor General’s reports have also revealed that Ministers sold the PMB paddy to their henchmen below the purchase prices. The PMB management had not made any attempts to recover the cost over the years. PMD Chairman Buddhika Iddamalgoda said that he had been appointed only three weeks earlier. There are 21 Auditor General’s reports on the PMD and he would go through all reports, he said. “We have purchased paddy amounting to 810 million rupees this season. We have 7,070 tonnes and we expect to make Rs 2 billion by selling them. I agree that we need to take a physical stock of what is in our stores,” he said.