Sugar Mafia Drama: The Brown Sugar Battle

Hold onto your sweet tooth, because Sri Lanka’s sugar scene is heating up — and it’s not your typical sugar story.

Four local factories — Pelwatte, Sewanagala, Ethimale, and Galoya — are sitting on mountains of brown sugar nobody’s buying. Why? Insiders whisper there’s a secret sugar mafia lurking in the shadows, quietly hoarding those stocks and drip-feeding the market just enough to keep prices high.

Deputy Minister of Trade R.M. Jayawardhana revealed that only 11% of sugar demand is met by local production, and just 20% of consumers actually use brown sugar made entirely in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, imports have been stopped, but traders might be sneaking in white sugar, turning it chemically into brown sugar, and selling it at higher prices — a classic sweet deception.

To add fuel to the fire, sugar farmers are protesting because government-run companies aren’t buying their sugarcane harvests. The tension is thick, and the crisis deepens.

The government insists there are no plans to privatize these companies yet. With Customs, the Consumer Affairs Authority, and the Sugar Research Institute all investigating, it’s a full-on sugar showdown.