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| Sunday, 29 August 2004 |
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Country ready with agri policies by Deepal Warnakulasuriya The Finance Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama said that the country is full of policies to upgrade the lifestyle of the farmers but, the efforts of chasing and changing governments had blocked policies. The Finance Minister who participated as the chief guest at the `Regional Workshop and Policy Roundtable Pro-poor Intervention Strategies in Irrigated Agriculture in Asia' held in Colombo last week stressed that time had come for massive investments in irrigation development. The workshop which was represented by several South Asian countries; Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Vietnam and Sri Lanka discussed on `Poverty in Irrigated Agriculture', `magnitude characteristics and causes of poverty', `Irrigation and poverty linkages', `impacts of irrigation on poverty, geo-spatial aspects of poverty in irrigation systems' and several other topics. Minister Amunugama also reiterated the need of using same water several times before it finally goes to the sea following the great water culture prevailed in the country. He also said that he who had worked so far as a spending minister now had to work as an earning minister to run the government and was facing obstacles as well as the victories in the process. He explained that the victories were the resources the country has and the obstacles were some disputes taking place between the central government and provincial authorities when implementing projects. International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Project Leader Dr. Imtizar Hussain said that the outcomes of the country studies will help policy makers, donor agencies and researches to get a better understanding of what type of irrigation investments could work for the poor. The workshop which outlined irrigation as an essential part of the package of technologies, institutions and policies underpinning increased agricultural output in Asia also stressed the need of it to be pro-poor, if the Asia is to reach the UN Millennium Goal of halving world poverty by the year 2015. |
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