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| Sunday, 5 September 2004 |
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Milk for the nation from Okanda Finance Okanda Finance (Private) Limited with its new company Vayamba Development Farming Corporation Limited has started the Rs. 767 million massive milk production project, approved by the Board of Investment, Sri Lanka, at Sirimbiadiya, Puttalam. Construction work on the milk factory has been completed and production will commence in September. At the final stage of the project Okanda hopes to provide 4000 jobs to the unemployed youth of the country. From the Sirimbiadiya factory fresh milk, yoghurt and curd will be distributed to the North Western province under the first stage of the project. Several milk products including cheese and butter will be distributed islandwide under the last stage. Initially 1000 litres of milk per day will be distributed. 'We hope to increase this to 10,000 litres per day during the latter stages,' a spokesman of Okanda said. Although there are a large number of milk farmers in the country, they have lost interest in the production of milk for various reasons, the official said. He said that the main reasons for this loss of interest are: Inability to get a reasonable price for milk, lack of milk-collecting centres in the rural areas and non-availability of basic facilities required for the production of milk. Having understood the above problems we have formulated an incentive programme for them on the following lines, the Okanda spokesman said. Only 17% of the country's milk requirement is produced at national level and the shortfall of 83% is imported as powdered milk with an annual expenditure of almost Rs. 1000 billion. |
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