Official Visit the Minister of Plantation Hon. Mahinda Samarasinghe
10th October 2014
A meeting was held at the Minister of Agricultural in Russian Federation in Ministry of Agricultural on 10 October 2014 in honour of the visiting Hon. Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Plantation Industries of Sri Lanka and delegation to Russian Federation. The major challenge confronting SriLanka tea industry today is to retain its preferred production targets and maintain the quality which issynonymous with “Ceylon Tea”. With regard to production targets, its share in the Russian market, percentagewise it has declined over the last 2 years to almost half of its originalshare. This has been due to aggressive competition from other tea producing countries and the very low rate o replanting and equally low productivity and the high production cost and the absence of an aggressive marketing cum promotional strategy of Ceylon Tea, said Hon. Minister Samarasinghe addressing the gathering at a meeting by Minister of Agricultural in Russia. He further said, “Our policy is to ensure that a major quantity of our teas find markets in value added form. We can certainly look at what kind of incentives should be provided to the industry for this purpose. The tea sector being a vital commercial sector, the country has a right to expect a substantial contribution from this sector to government revenue to augment urgent development needs of the country, especially when we as a nation are having insurmountable challenges in the immediate aftermath of a post war situation. The Sri Lanka Tea Board will work together with Russian Companies and buyers to ensure the good name of our teas. We have taken several steps to strengthen the relation between Sri Lanka Tea Board and Russian tea sellers. The Minister also said that tea was the drink of the 21st century and it certainly had a future, but Sri Lanka had to make it competitive global economy. Also his, informed that they had fruitful discussion about the strengthening of bilateral relations between the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Plantation Industries of Sri Lanka. Also agreed to continue of the development of trade and economic cooperation in agriculture sector.
