Batticaloa District ITAK MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam has asked Parliament why the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation recorded a Rs. 29.2 billion net profit over a period in which it received Rs. 41 billion in Treasury fuel subsidies, and whether the relief reached consumers at the pump at all.
Speaking in the House on Friday, Rasamanickam asked whether the full benefit of the April to June 2026 allocation had been passed through in lower pump prices, and whether the purpose of the state oil monopoly is to earn a profit or to supply affordable fuel, the Island and the Daily FT both reported on Saturday.
The April–June subsidy falls inside the period the profit covers. That is the core of his argument: public money was paid in to hold prices down over a stretch in which the recipient was profitable.
Correction — 11 November
This article originally described the Rs. 29.2 billion as a single-quarter profit covering the same three months as the subsidy. It is a first-half (six-month) figure. Ministry of Finance figures reported on 11 November put net profit for the first six months of 2026 at Rs. 29.2 billion, up 71.8% on Rs. 17 billion in the same period of 2025, with the Rs. 41 billion subsidy covering April–June — one quarter within that half. The passage comparing the result to a full year has been corrected below.
The scale of the profit
The CPC’s Rs. 29.2 billion for six months is close to what the corporation earned across all of last year. The Central Bank’s annual review recorded a full-year 2025 profit of Rs. 36.4 billion, itself up from Rs. 34.2 billion in 2024 — so the first half of 2026 represents roughly four-fifths of a full year’s earnings in half a year.
He disputes that fuel is sold below cost
Rasamanickam directly challenged Deputy Minister Kaushalya Ariyarathne’s statement that fuel is being sold below import cost, citing figures of Rs. 307 a litre for imported diesel and Rs. 322 for petrol. He asked for those to be set against prevailing retail prices and against the pricing formula itself.
Citing the Finance Ministry’s Mid-Year Fiscal Position Report, he said the Treasury held a cash balance of Rs. 690.3 billion at the end of June 2026, and asked why further taxes were being levied on fuel when reserves stood at that level.
There are two Rs. 41 billion tranches, not one
The figure Rasamanickam is questioning is not the diesel subsidy currently in the news, and the two are easy to confuse because they are the same size.
The allocation he asks about covers April to June 2026. A further Rs. 41 billion has separately been approved to subsidise Auto Diesel and Industrial Diesel across October, November and December, the Daily FT notes — the tranche announced by the President in late September, approved by Cabinet with petrol excluded, and appropriated through a Rs. 47 billion supplementary estimate presented to Parliament on 4 November. That second tranche funds the Rs. 70 per litre diesel payment.
Rasamanickam asked whether the Rs. 70 a litre subsidy would continue past 31 December 2026. He also sought the total subsidy allocated since January, the split between the CPC and private distributors, and monthly outlays on fuel and electricity relief.
The inflation argument
He said headline inflation reached 8.3% in October and food inflation 8.8%, and warned that costlier diesel would push up production costs in the coming Maha cultivation season.
That trajectory is consistent with what the Central Bank has already acknowledged. Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe said in late September that inflation had been above the Bank’s 7% upper band since July and hit 8% in August, a 37-month high. This desk has no independently sourced October figure and attributes the 8.3% and 8.8% readings to the MP.
What he wants instead
Rasamanickam pressed for targeted relief for farmers, fishermen and public transport operators rather than a blanket subsidy, arguing it would reach households and productive sectors faster, and that support for bus operators would feed through to fares. He demanded disclosure of how the subsidy money has been spent and whether it reached consumers.
Not reported
Neither filing records a government reply to the specific question of how a subsidised period produced a Rs. 29.2 billion profit, and neither states the source or audit status of that figure. Neither reconciles the MP’s Rs. 307 and Rs. 322 import costs against retail prices, so his challenge to the Deputy Minister stands unresolved in both accounts. No breakdown of the April–June Rs. 41 billion between the CPC and private distributors is given.
