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| Sunday, 29 February 2004 |
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Value addition vital for agricultural pursuits- Premier By Chanuka Mannapperuma Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinge last week urged those engaged in the plantation industry to move away from primary produces and lay emphasis on value addition to successfully face the challenge of globalisation. "Sri Lanka should be the platform for competitive value addition in agriculture. We must take agriculture to the 21st century and produce more agricultural products as well as value-added agro products.In that way, Sri Lanka's agriculture can move forward," he said. The Premier was delivering the keynote address as chief guest at the 150th anniversary of the Planters Association of Ceylon in Colombo last week. The Prime Minister explained that the future of Sri Lanka's agriculture depended on value addition. "We have land, water and human resources" and we should cultivate crops which are competitive in the market and which can aim at higher and middle income segments of the global market," he added. The Prime Minister said, the Government had already looked into this aspect in its 'Regaining Sri Lanka' Program."Certainly tea has a future and it would be the drink of the 21st century. Merely producing primary products is not sufficient without value addition. We have to look into new crops which can be cultivated," he said. While describing plantation as a capital incentive sector, Prime Minister said there were other capital incentive agriculture sectors such as animal husbandry,green houses,agro business and eco tourism. He stressed the need for a comprehensive economic partnership agreement with India covering the whole agriculture sector to face global challenges." We should look at such concrete economic partnership agreements gradually for the whole agriculture sector to face globalisation," he added. Chairman of the Planters Association of Ceylon, Rohan Fernando, said, that the plantation industry had come a long way amidst many difficulties and happy moments. Despite many challenges,the plantation sector still continues to play an important role in the economy of the country. |
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