Rs. 500 m for national paddy purchasing programme
 

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The Government has made arrangements to implement a national level paddy purchasing programme beginning next week to purchase the Yala paddy harvest.

Following a discussion with Agriculture Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka on Monday, Treasury Secretary Dr. P.B. Jayasundara is to release Rs. 500 million to the Agriculture Ministry to initially commence the purchase of paddy, a Ministry spokesman told the Daily News yesterday. "The country is expecting a bumper Yala harvest this year with between 850,000 metric tons to one million metric tons of paddy to be reaped. For

this year's Yala 330,000 hectares of paddy lands have been cultivated."

During this discussion, Wickramanayaka stressed that the Government had focused its attention on this national paddy purchasing programme.

The Minister instructed District Secretaries to purchase a kilo of Nadu paddy at Rs. 15.50 and a kilo of Samba paddy at Rs. 16.50.

Powers were also vested in the District Secretaries to the State owned paddy storage facilities in each district, he said.

The Minister also instructed officials to take prompt action according to requirements to provide relief measures to farmers.

Minister Wickramanayaka requested farmers to be patience and hand over their paddy stocks to Government purchasing centres without being duped by racketeers.

The reaping of the Yala paddy harvest has already commenced in Ampara, Kurunegala and certain parts of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa districts. The harvesting of paddy in all other districts will commence in the middle of this month, he said.

Deputy Agriculture Minister Jagath Pushpakumara, Agriculture Ministry Secretary Tissa Warnasuriya and all District Secretaries participated in this discussion.