ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka was going through new challenges in combatting medicine getting into the island via e-commerce platforms and from guests arriving from Thailand, Director of Customs Chandana Punchihewa mentioned.
“Most frequently medicine come into the nation via well-known e-commerce platforms,” Punchihewa instructed reporters.
“These gross sales that occur by way of web transactions are a brand new problem, as a result of it’s very troublesome to trace. The businesses function on the premise of the info supplied to them; they’re not conscious of what precisely is contained in the parcel.”
Sri Lanka had a really lax coverage relating to web purchases, he mentioned.
“It was a really small quantity of products that got here in via e-commerce platforms so we disregarded them principally. Solely final yr we started regulating the trade. Generally as a result of the worth of such items have been very trivial we didn’t even cost taxes on them.”
When officers realized medicine have been getting into this manner, they started strictly implementing Customs laws, he mentioned.
Generally, primarily based on worldwide connections with worldwide customs officers and the World Customs Group, native officers are tipped off on sure parcels, he mentioned.
One other problem was the rising development of medicine, similar to hashish, getting into the nation via guests arriving from Thailand, the place it was legalised, he mentioned.
3 arrests have been made thus far this yr.
Sri Lanka and Thailand have a visa free journey coverage.
In 2025, Sri Lanka Customs made a complete of 147 drug-related arrests, Punchihewa mentioned, which netted a complete of 435 kilograms of varied medicine with a road worth of 5.8 billion rupees.
This included 376 kilos of hashish, 32 kilos of cocaine, 14.6 kilos of MDA, 8.5 kilos of meth, 3.6 kilos of heroin and a pair of kilos of different medicine, he mentioned.
283 kilos of this have been detected on the Bandaranaike Worldwide airport; 14.4 kilos via Customs inspections, 97 kilos got here via the central mail alternate; 21 kilos from unaccompanied parcel companies or UPS; 19 kilos via passenger items warehouses. (Colombo/Ma26/2026)
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