Category: Agriculture

Dec 28, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is readying a claim for intellectual property protection for different types of Ceylon tea under global ”Geographical Indicators’ rules that would help market the product, a senior official said.Sri Lanka Tea Board chairman Lalith Hettiarachchi said they are seeking recognition for GI indicators for seven tea growing districts […]

Dec 24, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea production this year will be lower than in 2008 because of drought and a strike but earnings should match last year’s as prices have been good, a senior official said. “Prices have been good – at least 10-12 percent more than last year.” Sri Lankan tea prices […]

Dec 23, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom is offering a trading platform based on short message services (SMS) that can help farmers to sell their produce and create a forward market for agriculture produce, officials said. Phones that don’t have the unicode function will deliver SMS’s in ‘Singlish’, he said. Singlish […]

Dec 23, 2009 (LBO) – Tea export countries like Sri Lanka could see prices easing next year as better weather improves crops and reduces the global shortfall that drove prices higher in 2009, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has forecast.Tea prices reached a record high in 2009, but should ease next year as weather improves […]

Dec 18, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka should set up a commodity futures exchange and introduce forward contracts to make farmers more efficient and earn more, a policy advocacy group has suggested.“We must use information communications technology to give farmers information on weather, prices, costs and procurement of inputs.” “The forward sale contract system should […]

Dec 17, 2009 (LBO) – China has overtaken Sri Lanka as the world’s second largest tea exporter, and the island is in danger of losing its position as a major export origin, the Sri Lanka Tea Board has warned.But China and Vietnam are understood to have maintained their usual black tea production and enjoyed the […]

Dec 16, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tea factories are cutting energy costs under an initiative to make them more competitive in overseas markets given the island’s high cost of electricity, industry officials said.Furthermore, a lot of the machinery in tea factories is old and not energy efficient, officials said.Tea was the first sector selected […]

Dec 04, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tea export earnings in October hit a record high and average auction prices this year were much higher than in the last two years, although shipments were down owing to production problems, brokers said. The year-to-date average price of tea was also higher at 3.14 dollars a kilo […]

Dec 04, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Plantations Industries Ministry is considering giving an export rebate to desiccated coconut product exporters, a senior official said.Duty on edible oil imports was raised to protect coconut oil millers, who were otherwise unable to compete with cheap edible oil imports. Higher demand from coconut oil mills pushes up […]

Dec 02, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s plantations need foreign investment for estate and factory modernisation, including irrigation to counter changing weather patterns, said Kumar Jayasuriya, chairman, James Finlay, Colombo. Regional plantation companies running the island’s tea estates could do with foreign investment in irrigating fields, to cope with changes in rainfall patterns which could […]

Nov 30, 2009 (LBO) – A 270 million rupees initial public offer of Renuka Agrifoods, a firm that makes coconut-based food products, received applications worth 3.1 billion rupees, its managers said. Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka, managers to the issue which closed Friday afternoon, the opening day itself, said they received 5,016 applications for 1,386 […]

Nov 27, 2009 (LBO) – A trial Sri Lankan commodity trade matching portal using mobile phones to improve marketing of farmer produce will need private sector investment to be sustainable, an official said. Chitranganie Mubarak, a Senior Programme Head of the Information Communications Technology Agency (ICTA), said the project is part of efforts to use […]