International Coconut Day and its relevance to Sri Lanka

Nihal Somaweera

International Coconut Day was declared in 1998 at the 25th ministerial meeting of the Asia Pacific Coconut Community (APCC), an inter-governmental body established in 1969.

APCC has 17 member countries and Sri Lanka also a pioneer member. As per the declaration 'The International Coconut Day' falls on September 2.

Sri Lanka is among the top five coconut producing countries by the production volume and the extent under coconut is around 394,836 ha. (Ref. Table 1).

Due to the local industry friendly Mahinda Chinthana policies and the fertilizer subsidy, extended to coconut cultivation in 2011 May by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, remarkable increase in the nut production will be expected in years to come.

As per the National Coconut Sector Development Plan 2011-2016, estimated annual requirement of coconut for both domestic and industrial uses will be around 3,650 million nuts (Ref. Table 2). The domestic consumption absorbs 80 percent of the nuts produced and balance 20 percent is available for kernel based industries.

Coconut industry sector is the largest and comprises two sub sectors, ie. Formal and informal. The formal sector representing coconut based manufacturing industries for export market. The informal sector representing mostly cottage level small scale manufacturing units of producing for the domestic market.

As per the Coconut Development Strategic Plan prepared by the newly created Ministry of Coconut Development and Janatha Estate Development, it is planned to get the harvest of 3,650 million nuts by year 2016.

Despite the prevailing dry weather condition in main coconut producing districts such as Kurunegala and Puttlam, the target of 3,650 million nuts will be still possible to the following policies and programmes of the government.

(i) Extension of fertilizer subsidy to coconut plantation in 2010. Under the subsidy government is absorbing 2/3 of the fertilizer cost. By promoting application of fertilizer it is expected to increase coconut production annually by 10 percent.

(ii) Provision of low cost financing for rehabilitation of existing coconut plantation including soil moisture conservation, rainwater harvesting and irrigation to increase coconut production by 15 percent.

Further by provision of free planting materials for small holdings up to 2 ½ Ac and two plants per home garden under Divineguma will ensure long term harvest increase which will enable the future development of the coconut based industries. With the opening up of coconut growing districts in North an additional acreage will be added to the existing one million acres of coconut plantation of the country.

In order to supply necessary planting materials for above extension programmes, another programme is underway to produce 32 million seedlings by 2016 with the help of community based organizations set up under Kapruka Purawara programme. Today Sri Lanka has come to a cross road of the development in the coconut industry due to the prevailing peaceful situation in the country, local industry friendly policies of the government and implementation of the fertilizer subsidy.

It is very important to give this message to all the stakeholders involved in this sector at the national function which will be held today (October 12) parallel to International Coconut Day and get their active contribution for further development of the industry. Therefore, the national event to mark the 'International Coconut Day' is timely and very relevant to Sri Lanka's context.

The writer is the Secretary, Ministry of Coconut Development and Janatha Estate Development