Minister Abeywardane elected Vice Chairman at FAO conference

Agriculture Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardane was elected Vice Chairman at the 38th session of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Conference held in Rome, Italy recently.

The 38th session of the FAO was held with the participation of 196 member countries and Minister Mahinda Yapa Abeywardane is the first Sri Lankan who was elected as the Vice Chairman of the FAO Conference.

Minister Abeywardane said the agriculture sector is the foundation of Sri Lanka’s economy. He said over 70% of the population living in rural areas depend on agriculture for their livelihood. It contributes 13% to the Gross Domestic Product, and employees 33% of the workforce. Despite a small island, Sri Lanka has a considerable potential for economic growth through agricultural sector, and therefore the Government is very optimistic of the persuasive need to attain food and nutrition security in the country through self - sufficiency. “The Government of Sri Lanka implemented a National Campaign, called “Let Us cultivate and uplift the Nation during 2007 - 2010, to accelerate domestic food production. Having identified the impact of soaring food prices, and recognized enhancing food production as the main strategy to cope up with rising food prices, the Government continued with its national Campaign, by giving high

priority to it, while also implementing an additional programme; a special home gardening project termed “Divi Neguma’“to increase vegetable production, and making available the harvest throughout the year to stabilize market prices,” he said.

“The intention of this project was to establish 2.5 million domestic units covering all villages in the country. Its prime objective is to strengthen peoples’ economic status and minimize their dependency on market for food and nutrition requirement. These programmes aim to raise food production through distribution of high yielding seeds and providing training, technical and credit facility etc. A High Level Committee on Food and Nutrition Security and Monitoring of Cost of Living chaired by President Mahinda Rajapaksa meets regularly to review the food situation in the country, price movement in the market and other developments in these fields to make policy directives to address the issues arising therein. Moreover the Government has introduced following policy measures being complementary to brace up aforesaid programmes. · Expansion of paddy purchasing programme, raising floor price of rough rice paid to farmers under paddy purchasing scheme and imposing ceiling price for milled rice in the local market;

· Continuing fertilizer subsidy scheme with further expansion to other crops;
· Relaxing seed import policy allowing to import of hybrid seeds;
· Provision of import duty concessions for agricultural machinery;
· Adjusting import tariff from time to time in favour of producer and consumer as well.