He said 136,328 men, women and children still remained inside camps across the island's north, down from some 280,000 at the end of the fighting in May with the defeat of Tamil Tiger guerrillas.
A batch of 41,000 people were allowed to leave the camps in October, making it the biggest single release of war displaced people held in camps, according to official figures.
Samarasinghe said the government will make a formal announcement on Saturday about giving free access to displaced people to leave the camps which were tightly guarded by security forces.
"While I am fully aware of the undesirability of keeping civilians in camps unnecessarily for long periods, the government is not convinced that it is good policy to rush them into areas that have not been fully cleared," he said.
He said over 1.5 million mines