34th World Congress of Pepper community

The 34th World Congress of the Pepper community will be held from September 4-7 at the Earls Regency hotel in Kandy.

It will be attended by academics, exporters, importers, processors and industrialists engaged in the pepper industry. There will be representatives from Brazil, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, USA, Canada, and Europe, said Assistant Director, Publicity and Trade Export Agriculture Department Dr. Jayananda Weerasinghe.

There will be several sessions including research, future developments, issues and problems relating to the pepper industry and the way forward. There will be several sessions on how to develop the industry to face future challenges.

Concurrent to the World Congress we are planning to have a spice exhibition as well, he said. A spokesman for the Department of Census and Statistics said that the agricultural industry has improved tremendously to reach 11% of the GNP in the first quarter of 2006. This is the highest ever increase in the agricultural industry, in Sri Lanka, since 1990.

During the first quarter of 2005, it reported a decrease of -0.1%. The rapid improvement in the agricultural industry within one year, is due to the steps taken by the government.

The achievement was possible, due to the incentives introduced by the government including subsidised fertiliser, reconstruction of tanks while implementing the 10,000 tanks program and controlling the import of rice. Apart from this, favourable weather too helped.