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New Plant Protection Act in the offing

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The Agriculture Ministry will shortly introduce a new Plant Protection Act to regularise the import of flowers, ornamental plants, seeds and planting materials for agriculture purposes and various other consumer requirements.

The draft Bill has already been presented in Parliament and it is expected to gain parliamentary approval this month, an Agriculture Ministry spokesman told the Daily News yesterday.

This Act, for the first time in the Sri Lankan agriculture sector legally defines the quality of imported seeds and other planting materials required for farmers. If this definition is violated, farmers will be able to take legal action against the importers, he said.

The new act will facilitate the import of high quality planting material and seeds to the country, preventing the dumping of low quality stuff by the traders which has severely affected the local cultivations.

Through this new act, the Agriculture Ministry hopes to induce the export of valuable planting materials to foreign countries too and prevent the attempts made by traders to export precious plant varieties under various illegal methods. " This would earn a lot of foreign exchange to the country," he said.

" Under the National Seeds Policy, seed paddy and other seed materials are produced by the private sector too. However, the quality of these seeds were not challenged before court. This Bill will fulfil this long felt need by safeguarding farmer's rights," he said.

Through this Plant Protection Act, the Agriculture Ministry will strictly impose rules and regulations this year to prevent low quality seeds and other planting materials being imported to Sri Lanka from various countries as it had become a severe threat to the local agricultural products of farmers.

The Ministry is also planning to regularise the import of fruits. This process was started by the Ministry during the past festive season. A large quantity of fruits have been imported during the past festive season violating quarantine laws. However, the Director of Seed Certification and Plant Protection Centre has taken stern actions against those who imported these fruits.

Scientists have pointed out that these imported fruits may cause various infections and other damage to local agriculture. They are also very keen on this proposed act formulated by the Ministry to regularise import and export of planting and other seed materials.

He said that threat faced by local flower growers due to import flowers has made Agriculture Minister S.B. Dissanayake to restrict the import of flowers.

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