34th session of International Pepper Community

The International Pepper Community (IPC), an inter-governmental organisation was established in 1972 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and Pacific (UN-ESCAP).

The IPC consists of pepper producing countries namely Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam as full members and Papua New Guinea and China as associate members.

Although Vietnam is the largest pepper producing country, it obtained the full membership in 2005. The 34th session of the International Pepper Community (IPC), from September 4 to 7, will be inaugurated by Minister of Agriculture Development Chamal Rajapaksa at 9.30 a.m. in Kandy on the opening day at the Earl's Regency Hotel in Kandy. The Minister will deliver the opening address. The official hosts to the IPC session is the Department of Export Agriculture under the Ministry of Agriculture Development.

It is jointly organised by the Department of Export Agriculture, the Spice Council of Sri Lanka, Spices and Allied Products Producers Association (SAPPTA) and Export Development Board (EDB). After the inaugural session, four meetings will be held.

The Peppertech meeting is the technical forum for the community to study and identify problems faced by the pepper industry pertaining to production, processing marketing and product development and to propose a solution for them.

The meeting also becomes an experts' forum of all the pepper producing countries to meet and exchange information on subjects relating to the pepper industry. This year's theme of the technical session is IPM (Integrated Pest Management for quality Pepper).

The pepper exporters' meeting is to discuss the pepper economy situation of production, export, prices, prospects, problems and other matters related to the world pepper trade.

The Pepperexim meeting is to discuss various aspects of the pepper trade such as supply and demand situation in each producing and consuming country, quality improvement and quality control, possible use of technology in improving quality.

The meeting is mainly aimed as a forum to exchange information among the exporters and importers, and also to do business.