UN: Cost of living crunch threatens to sink millions of Lankans already facing hard choices 

ramps up humanitarian appeal for life-saving assistance to 3.4 million people

More than one half of Sri Lanka’s population, currently making use of food-based coping strategies and livelihood coping strategies since they do not have enough food or money to buy food, are likely to “resort to means that will have a higher negative impact on their medium long-term capacity to generate income,” says a UN report.

The report, titled ‘Sri Lanka: Multi-dimensional crisis – Humanitarian needs and priorities JUNE – DEC 2022’, by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), on behalf of Humanitarian Country Team and partners, says that an estimated 13.5 million, or 61.1 percent of the population, are using food-based coping strategies, and 47.7 percent of households use livelihood coping strategies.

The food and livelihood coping strategies, being adopted in response to the situation by the Lankans, include cutting the number of meals consumed in a day, reducing meal sizes, spending savings, and purchasing food on credit, says the report, originally published on Nov 8, 2022.

“About 5.3 million people, or 24 percent of population, are reducing the number of meals, and the same percentage of the population are reducing adults’ consumption so that children can eat, with women being the last to eat in the household. The proportion of households, with unacceptable diets, is 10 times higher, compared to the end of 2021. About 8.7 million people in the country are reported as not consuming adequate diets; nearly 32.2 percent of these households are in urban areas. The livelihood-based coping strategies, that households are resorting to, include spending savings, selling productive assets, reducing essential healthcare expenses, withdrawing kids from school, buying food on credit, borrowing money or pawning jewels. Once these least severe strategies are exhausted, households would likely resort to means that will have a higher negative impact on their medium long-term capacity to generate income and their food security. Informal income earners, unskilled casual laborers, and those who do not have home gardens, or livestock, are among the most vulnerable to food insecurity,” says the report.

It says: With the reduction in domestic agricultural production, during the Yala 2022 season, the prices of food are expected to increase further and reliance on imported food will intensify. This, in turn, would continue to drive a severe reduction of food availability and food access, with negative effects on food and nutrition security during the upcoming lean season, which starts in October 2022. Unless there is a significant turnaround on field cultivation and intensified agricultural support is mobilized, the upcoming Maha 2022/2023 season will remain a challenge. Without a solid domestic production base, food insecurity will likely continue and those who will suffer the most are the poor and already vulnerable families.

“Prices of most commodities have increased considerably since the end of 2021, and food inflation was measured at 94.9 percent in September 2022 compared to a year before, a further increase from 93.7 percent in August. Based on the recently concluded Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission by WFP and FAO, nationally, 6.3 million people, or 28 percent of the population, are found to be moderately or severely food insecure. Of particular concern are 66,000 people who are severely acute food insecure, 18,000 of whom are living in the estate sector, such as tea plantations. In total, 57.1 percent of severely insecure people in the country are in the estate sector, and 41.6 percent in the Central Province. Characteristics most strongly associated with moderately food insecure households include female-headed households (at 39.8 percent), heads of household with no education (at 43.1 percent), households of Indian Tamil ethnicity (at 50.3 percent) and beneficiaries of the Samurdi programme (at 41.3 percent).

A slightly different set of characteristics are associated with severe acute food insecurity, which include the estate sector (at 2 percent), high dependency ratio11 (at 2.3 percent), “assistance” as the main source of income (at 1.4 percent) and having at least one member living in the household with a disability12 (at 1.2 percent).”