Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2021-04-05

Revision of Tea Planting Subsidies currently paid to encourage the Tea Cultivation

- The total tea production in the year 2019 was 300 million kg and approximately 75% out of which amounting to 225 million kg were manufactured by tea smallholdings sector. It has been identified the necessity of enhancing the productivity of tea smallholdings lands in order to maintain the tea production at the optimum level. It is required to encourage farmers to obtain the production target of 360 million kg of tea by the year 2025, since the attention of farmers for tea cultivation and replanting is insufficient due to the fact that it takes nearly 04 years to generate income by the replantation of tea and it will cost a lot of money. Accordingly, the proposal made by the Minister of Plantation to increase the Tea Replanting Subsidy and the Tea New Planting Subsidy of Rs. 400,000/- per hectare to Rs.500,000/- per hectare, was approved by the Cabinet.