The Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries has taken steps to implement a rubber cultivation master plan in the next few years with the aim of increasing the annual natural rubber production in Sri Lanka by 60 percent.
For this reason, the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industry, Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera mentioned that it is planned to start rubber cultivation in 100,000 acres in areas like Monaragala, Ampara and Badulla belonging to the dry zone.
The minister mentioned this in a discussion with the manufacturers who are involved in the production of Technically Specified Rubber (TSR) yesterday (31) morning. Currently, TSR has 10 rubber related manufacturing plants in the country. For the TSR rubber they use for their products, the tree laces (ඔට්ටපාළු) that are discarded during the cutting of latex are used.
But the industrialists said that they are currently utilizing about 30 percent of their production capacity and the lack of tree laces has affected it.
The minister who expressed his opinion in this discussion said that a master plan has been prepared for the expansion of 100,000 acres of rubber cultivation in three districts including Monaragala and instructed the rubber development department to start its implementation.
He also instructed the Rubber Research Institute to speed up the research to identify new clones for the production of rubber varieties that can produce more latex.
He also mentioned that the Cabinet decided to temporarily allow the import of Cup Lumps instead of tree laces as there are not enough tree laces for the factories making TSR rubber related products.
Currently, there is a demand of 60,240 metric tons for TSR in our country, but only 17,225 metric tons are produced in this country. For this reason, the minister emphasized that the import of TSR has been temporarily approved while protecting the domestic tree laces industry.
The minister also said that henceforth it was decided not to approve the cultivation of rubber on the lands of Kalutara district. The reason for that is because it has been confirmed that there is a high potential for the cultivation of spices, as well as the cultivation of spices like pepper in the lands of Kalutara district to get higher income than the cultivation of rubber.
The chairman of the Rubber Research Institute Mr. Sarath Chandrasiri and the officials of the Ministry as well as TSR related industrialists participated in this discussion.
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