Sadaharitha seeks meeting with CB Governor on forestry regulations
View(s):Sadaharitha Plantations Ltd, a commercial forestry management company, has sought a meeting with the Central Bank (CB) Governor Nivard Cabraal to discuss regulating the forestry firms in the country in a bid to advocate better practices into this industry, officials said.
“We approached the CB about a year ago and they were quite interested and recently we wrote to the governor as well for a meeting,” H. Rohana, CEO Sadaharitha told the Business Times.
He said they started an innovative programme to popularise the cultivation of Agarwood as a home garden plant to strengthen the economy of the country. The company has established a state- of- the- art nursery to cultivate Aquilaria trees, which is used to produce Agarwood as the first step to popularise this as a garden plant.
The nursery established in Ingiriya, spanning 5-acres, has 250,000 Agarwood plants, he said, adding that the nursery operations include importing highest standard Agarwood seeds from Asia Pacific countries, cultivating them and nurturing them upto the point of handing over to the customer and the nursery is undoubtedly the largest nursery in Asia.
“Another unique feature of the nursery in Ingiriya is its ability to maintain a buffer stock of 500,000 plants at any given time. The nursery employees are highly trained according to international standards in commercial nursery management.”
The Agarwood plants are produced in Vietnam and the seeds are imported to Sri Lanka after being certified and approved by the State Agriculture Department of Vietnam, a company press release said. “The staff in the nursery is well trained in all aspects of nursery management to manage these plants from its infancy stage upto the stage it can be handed over to the customer for cultivation. Apart from its own staff, the company from time to time employs services of both foreign and local experts in commercial plantation management to advise their staff,” the release said.