The finance ministry said a tax on potatoes has been raised by 30 rupees to 50 rupees a kilogram ahead of an upcoming harvest of paddy.
In addition to taxing rice imports, Sri Lanka also taxes alternative carbohydrates consumed by the people such as potatoes and wheat flour to re-engineer the food habits of citizens and force them to consume domestically produced rice under a nationalist-autarkist ideology.
Sri Lanka's state-backed inefficient farmers, who are given over 30 billion rupees of fertilizer subsidies from taxes collected from the people, cannot produce either rice or potatoes as efficiently as foreign farmers, including their counterparts in India or Pakistan.
Both India and Pakistan have farmers who produce goods cheaply enough to feed their fellow citizens at world beating prices as well as export and reduce hunger of the poorest people in other countries at fair market prices.
The finance ministry said a 50 rupee tax is also charged on large onion imports.
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