ABSTRACT
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MOAL) Cereal Balance Sheet (1974), production of paddy in Sri Lanka amounted to 898,000 rice tons in 1972 and 885,051 in 1973 (1 ton=1016 kg). After accounting for seed and wastage, the net domestic supply was 790,800 rice tons in 1972 and 728,846 in 1973. However, the District-level data from MOAL for 1972 (1973a) sums to 987,288 tons if a standard paddy/rice conversion of 67 per cent is used (asinPMB, 1974, p. 24). There is thus a 10 per cent error margin between these sets of figures, and some of the assumptions behind the MOAL figures must be examined.
