Tyre Import Curbs Rushed In With No Market Study — Who Wins, Drivers or a Few Factories?

Parliament's finance oversight committee just found out the Consumer Affairs Authority gazetted new technical barriers on tyre imports without doing any market concentration study first. Sri Lanka's tyre factories have capacity to make 2.4 million tyres a year but only produced about 1.34 million in 2024, and of 18 registered "tyre" companies, just 8 actually manufacture new tyres — the rest retread old ones. MPs compared this to the ceramic tile import ban that left a local duopoly setting prices while buyers had nowhere else to turn. The case for restricting imports: cheap, uncertified tyres can be unsafe, and local manufacturing needs protection to survive and grow. The case against: if local factories aren't even using half their capacity, squeezing imports now just hands pricing power to a handful of firms before anyone's checked whether that's fair to drivers. Have your tyre prices moved this year, and where are you buying — a local brand or an import? Would you trust a tyre made here as much as a Bridgestone or Michelin import? ටයර් මිල ගණන් මේ වසරේ වැඩි වුණාද? ඔයාලගේ අත්දැකීම් කොමෙන්ට් කරන්න.