The government has been urged to strengthen the back end structure of the local agriculture sector by identifying the key points of both public and private institutions and addressing them by actively engaging in discussions with relevant stakeholders of the industry.
This appeal was made by Sunshine Holdings Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy at the Sri Lanka Economic Summit ‘Road-map for Takeoff: Driving a People-Centric Economic Revival’, organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC),
Govindasamy stressed that fortifying this framework would prepare the agriculture sector to leverage numerous post-COVID opportunities, bring prosperity for all parties involved and make the sector resilient for any future disruption.
“COVID-19 has brought several opportunities for the Agri sector, and the government and private sector have ambitious plans on being self-sufficient in agriculture, dairy and fishery.
The government, with right inputs coming from industry stakeholders, has to re look at these processes and understand where the gaps are.
Bridging these gaps will not only prepare the Agri sector to latch on to post-pandemic opportunities but also make the sector more resilient to change,” commented Govindasamy.
Taking the dairy industry as an example, Govindasamy said, “The country has a great vision for the local dairy industry intending to make Sri Lanka self-sufficient in milk by 2023.
However, the backend framework has to be perfect before even try to bring a herd. Also, the animals need to have enough feed, which means that we have to clear land for farmers to grow.
This needs to be done through a transparent land clearing process. Furthermore, the industry needs to deploy enough machinery and bring in modern technologies to meet this target.
There are so many aspects to be looked at from a back-end operations perspective to make front-end operations of the dairy industry successful,” said Govindasamy.
During the panel discussion, Govindasamy praised the government for the measures taken to uplift the agriculture sector including the recent pledge by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on empowering the local dairy industry and increasing domestic liquid milk production in the next decade.
He commended the initial steps that the Ministry of Agriculture has taken to modernise the existing animal quarantine laws.