Fruit, vegetable exporters welcome:

Cargo village for perishable goods

Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

Zuraish Hashim

The move to set up facilities at the Cargo Village at the Bandaranaike International Airport will be a major boost to the fruit and vegetable exporters in the country. The state-of-the-art facility will enable to overcome a stumbling block in the past where the safety of perishable goods was a huge problem the sector faced, Fruit and Vegetable Exporters, Producers, Processors Association Secretary Zuraish Hashim told Daily News Business.

The agricultural sector aims at achieving an export value of Rs 10 billion by 2020 and the necessary support extended by the Government is encouraging to achieve this target.

The steps taken to ensure the availability of land for mass cultivation is timely and this would result in low cost of production.

The products could be given to end-user at an affordable price for their advantage, he said.

The Government has decided to extend the fertilizer subsidy to all other agriculture related sectors to enhance and assist them. This would stimulate the farmer community to expand on their cultivation and increase production. The reduction of interest rates has also help the sector immensely as the high cost of finance was a drawback, Hashim said.

The Association has embarked on a few projects that are earmark for the current year for the benefit of the sector. The main aim is to establish couple of clusters to enable the rural farmers to engage in cultivation in an organize manner that would bring down the cost to the end-user.

The Association has become the main focal point of the agricultural sector in Sri Lanka.

This is proven by the surge of new members and farming clusters joining in achieving our desired goals, he said.

The export fraternity has seen an improvement from the end of last year in our major export markets where Maldives has bounced back from the recession and the Gulf and European markets slowly progressing back to business.

“This would enable the sector to perform better this year,” he said.