Further to yesterday's cabinet decision to revoke the extraordinary gazette issued by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on the subject of a Maximum Retail Price (MRP) on rice, State Minister of Consumer Protection Lasantha Alagiyawanna expressed the reason why such decisions were made during a media briefing this morning (28). "A decision to revoke the Maximum Retail Price on Rice was made at the cabinet meeting yesterday (27). The reason why we made this decision is so that the consumer is protected. We made the decision to import 100,00 Metric Tonnes of rice as well. This was not something we wanted to do, but had to do while thinking of the consumer and not rice mill owners,” said Alagiyawanna He went on to say that around 800 containers belonging to importers are stuck at the port and are yet to be cleared, citing the lack of dollars in the country. Whereas he clarified that this will be attended to shortly as the Cabinet of Ministers decided to allocate 50 million US dollars which will assist the importers to get the containers cleared. When questioned by a journalist whether the imported rice would be organic and suitable for consumption, Alagiyawanna responded by saying that all food imported into the country goes through a stringent audit process and the food controller’s inspections, further stating that all the rice imported into the country would be "healthy". "The Ministry of Trade will be coordinating the import of this stock of rice and this transaction will be carried out as a Government to Government deal coordinated by the embassies of India and Burma", said Aligiyawanna.