By The Finance Ministry has announced that education, medicines, health services (excluding hospital room charges), essential foods, and grains have been exempted from value-added tax .
Among the exempt items were:
- Wheat and wheat flour
- Infant milk powder
- Medicines, medicinal products (except perfumes), medicinal raw materials
- Unani, homeopathy or Ayurveda raw materials
- Crude oil, kerosene, aviation fuel, bunkers
- Artificial limbs, wheelchairs, equipment for disabled, equipment used by blind persons, brail equipment, brail typewriters and items that can be exempted by the Minister on request by disabled
Organic fertilizer, artemia eggs - Agricultural seeds, plants, prawn feed, and shrimp feed, except for chicken feed and other animal feed
- Thread for textile industry
- Dye for handlooms
Exempt Services
- Education Services
- Public transport (except air, waterborne transport, tourist and taxi services)
- Electricity
- Funeral services
- BIA restaurants
- Goods and services for diplomats, goods and services given by international organizations as emergency aid
- Financial Services
- Health Services (except room charges)
- Goods under Special Commodity Levy
- Locally produced handlooms
- Local rice, rice flour and bread
- Locally produced, unprocessed, agricultural, fish items (green leaf, rubber, all vegetables, crops, fish)
- Domestically made gauze for operations
- Textiles under CESS tax
- Services consumed outside the country for which payments come in rupees
- Services to increase the value of apparel
- Services for the elderly or children
- Good for Strategic Development Projects
- Goods or Services by Central Bank of Sri Lanka
- Services provided free of charge to government
- Locally produced goods for duty-free shops
