Fuel Subsidy: Minister Jayatissa’s math adds up

Minister Nalinda Jayatissa claimed that the government bears a fiscal cost of LKR 20 billion per month from subsidising petrol and diesel prices.

To verify this cost claim, FactCheck.lk consulted the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s (CBSL) Monthly Indicators, and the fuel pricing formula introduced by the Ministry of Finance in 2018, which is evaluated monthly by the Fuel Price Tracker published by Verité Research, and government statements on the rupee value of per liter subsidy on petrol and diesel.

The government statements say that the per-litre subsidy rates are LKR 20 for petrol and LKR 100 for diesel. FactCheck.lk evaluates whether this would result in a monthly cost of about LKR 20 billion for the government as claimed by the minister. 

Using the CBSL Monthly Indicators, FactCheck.lk applied these stated subsidy rates to annual sales volumes of petrol and diesel in 2025 —the most recent full-year data available.

As shown in Exhibit 1, if the same volume is sold in 2026, the estimated subsidy would be LKR 251.75 billion per year, which is equivalent to LKR 20.98 billion per month. This is about 5% more than the minister's stated figure. 

The minister’s statement of LKR 20 billion, therefore, seems to project a decline of about 5% in sales relative to 2025 levels. A reduced sales projection would be reasonable given the likely (but not yet calculatable) decrease in the volume of fuel sales due to increase in prices. 

Therefore, we classify the minister’s statement as TRUE.