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Seylan Bank has been successful in securing a market share greater than most of its competitors in the agricultural Forward Sales Agreement sector.

This was revealed at the first national convention organised by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to assess the success of the concept held recently.

The Central Bank introduced the concept of the 'Forward Sales Agreement' a few years ago, in order to maintain stable prices for a selective group of agricultural products such as paddy, maize and soya beans. One of the reasons for this success was due to Seylan Bank's initiative of introducing a credit card the 'Govisarupatha' for farmers, the first of its kind. The Govisarupatha enables farmers to make their purchases of fertilizer and seeds required for cultivation without actually negotiating a loan or providing any further security.

This has made the lives of farmers much easier and thereby helping them to continue with the cultivation without any disruption. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka was the main organiser of this event and a number of high level officials and credit officers of state owned commercial banks and other main commercial banks participated in the program.

Officers of most of the development banks throughout the island and agricultural and irrigation Ministry's officials were also persent. From the private sector agricultural product purchasing companies were among the participants.

The Chief Guest, Minister of Rural Economy and Deputy Minister of Finance Bandula Gunawardane outlined various steps that the government had taken to improve revenue in the agricultural sector and added that the Forward Sales Agreement Concept is one of the key steps that helps to improve the standards of small farmers, and in turn helps to achieve the government's objectives.

The main subject of discussion was the performance of Forward Sales Agreements.

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