Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-07-18

Producing of young Agricultural Entrepreneurs

- The absence of a developed young agricultural community in the country to undertake agricultural activities using advanced technology, with entrepreneurial capacity has been identified as a problem directly affecting the low productivity in the field of agriculture of the country. Even though a considerable number of young people qualify annually from the Schools of Agriculture and from the Faculties of Agriculture in the Universities, majority of them drift away from the agriculture sector as a vocation, as a result of the field of agriculture being a non-profitable venture when compared to that of other fields and involvement in the agricultural sector is a hardly recognized vocation in the society.

It has been planned to implement a project to produce young agriculture entrepreneurs who could engage themselves in the commercial agriculture under the National Programme on Food Production, with a view to maintaining the contribution of the agriculture sector towards the country's national production at a high level. Accordingly, the proposal made by H.E. the President Maithripala Sirisena, to provide loan facilities to obtain resources inclusive of modern agricultural technological equipment for 100 young entrepreneurs selected from the Kurunegala District under its pilot project and on the basis of the success of the pilot project to implement the project with the participation of 1000 young entrepreneurs from the South Western, North Central and Eastern Provinces and at the next stage, with the participation of 10,000 young men and women agri entrepreneurs from all parts of the island, was approved by the Cabinet.