SL agriculture exports to treble in value by 2020
Sri Lanka’s Department of Export Agriculture (DEA) has an ambitious programme to treble exports to US$1 billion by 2020 from $328 million now, according to N.K.A. Rupasinghe, DEA Director General.Speaking at the AGM of the Spices Council held in Colombo last week in which Daya Gamage, Minister of Primary Industries was the Chief Guest, he said agricultural exports by end 2013 stood at 45 metric tonnes compared to 5 metric tonnes in 1972. Mr. Rupasinghe enumerated the various weaknesses and threats confronting the industry such as low productivity, inadequate market promotion activities, low investment on value addition, quality not valued throughout the value chain, inadequate market response for quality products, high cost of production (labour, machinery, etc) and lack of synergy, mutual respect and understanding among stakeholders.
He said the way forward for success is to increase production, productivity, quality improvement, value addition and re-exports after value addition to meet international quality requirements. To achieve these requirements they would, he said embark on R&D and information and communications improvements.Efforts will be made to improve quality and market promotion activities and promotion of grading and value addition of products.He said that to achieve these goals they would encourage stakeholders to invest and establish public and private participation in all aspects of production, processing, value addition and marketing. There are also efforts to revise the Export Agriculture Promotion Act in line with the industry needs.Mr. Rupasinghe said that the government has the power to somehow collect tax revenues but the attempts of the present government are to help the private sector to increase their income.