Considering the immense requests made and the difficulties faced by the general public in exchanging willfully defaced currency notes after 31.03.2018, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has decided to continue the service of exchange of willfully mutilated, altered and defaced currency notes from CBSL until further notice.

Accordingly, the general public is hereby informed to submit such currency notes to the CBSL Head Office or Regional Offices located at Anuradhapura, Matale, Matara, Trincomalee, Nuwara Eliya, Kilinochchi or send the same by registered post to the following address together with the duly completed application form. The relevant application form can be obtained from the CBSL website (www.cbsl.gov.lk), Regional Offices and any branch of Licensed Commercial Banks (LCBs).

Headline Inflation, as measured by the change in the National Consumer Price Index (NCPI, 2013=100), which is compiled by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS), decreased to 3.2 per cent in February 2018 from 5.4 per cent in January 2018, on year-on-year basis. The high base prevailed in February 2017 as well as the monthly decline in Food prices in February 2018 supported by the favourable supply conditions attributed to this sharp decline in year-on-year inflation in February 2018.

The change in the NCPI measured on an annual average basis decreased from 7.6 per cent in January 2018 to 7.2 per cent in February 2018.

When the monthly change is considered, the NCPI declined from 125.8 index points in January 2018 to 123.7 index points in February 2018 largely due to the decline in prices of the items in the Food category, particularly that of vegetables, green chillies, red onions, rice and big onions. Meanwhile, price increases were observed in all the sub-categories in the Non-food category except for Communication sub-category.