Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2016-04-26

National Agribusiness Development Programme

- This programme is a five year programme financed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) affiliated to the United Nations Organization. The main objective of this programme is to increase the income of the rural small farm owners and particularly the youth who do not own lands, by 20 - 30% through provision of better farm prices, upliftment of farm productivity and the value addition for the farm products. Under this programme, 6 projects of value addition for agro products have been initiated in collaboration with the private sector and these projects have contributed directly to increase the income of 5,648 rural agro producers. At the same time, opportunities have been provided for 2,710 rural entrepreneurs to improve their products through the grant of small scale credit facilities. Accordingly, the proposal made by H.E. the President, Maithripala Sirisena, to improve the farm products so as to further enhance the benefits under this programme and to provide entrepreneurship training to the youth of the low income families along with easy small scale loan facilities, was approved by the Cabinet.