By The Pulseline News Desk
ITAK General Secretary M.A. Sumanthiran has questioned a population figure published in a recent Central Bank report, pointing to a major discrepancy between the figure given for the Northern Province and the latest official Census data.
“The Central Bank Report gives an absolutely false data in relation to the Northern Province! The population of the North is said to be 557,000 when the actual figure is more than double that,” Sumanthiran said in a post on X.
The figure cited by Sumanthiran appears in the “Country Profile – 2025” table included in the Central Bank’s recently released Sri Lanka Socio-Economic Data – 2026.
The table places Sri Lanka’s total population at 21.756 million and gives the population of the Northern Province as 557,000.
However, the 2024 Census of Population and Housing, published by the Department of Census and Statistics, records the Northern Province population at 1,150,148, representing 5.3% of the country’s total population.
According to the Census, the population of the five districts in the Northern Province is:
- Jaffna: 594,751
- Mannar: 123,756
- Vavuniya: 172,312
- Mullaitivu: 122,619
- Kilinochchi: 136,710
The five districts together account for 1,150,148 people.
This means the figure of 557,000 published in the Central Bank table is 593,148 lower than the latest official Census figure and amounts to less than half of the population recorded for the province in 2024.
The discrepancy raises questions over the source and reference year of the Central Bank figure, particularly given that the 2024 Census provides a more recent official population count.
Population data are used for a range of government planning and policy purposes, including the allocation of public resources, infrastructure development, delivery of public services and assessment of regional needs.
The Central Bank’s 2026 publication contains data from different reference periods, and it has not been immediately established why the Northern Province figure differs so substantially from the 2024 Census figure.
The issue now places the spotlight on the Central Bank to clarify whether the 557,000 figure represents an older population estimate or whether it was included in the report in error.
For the Northern Province, the difference is not a marginal statistical variation. The Central Bank figure effectively leaves out more than 593,000 people when compared with the country’s latest official Census.
The discrepancy is therefore likely to prompt further questions about the accuracy and updating of population data used in the Government’s latest socio-economic assessment.
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