Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-06-19

Increasing the Production of Local Big Onions

- Even though the big onion cultivation which is very popular among the farmers of the dry zone and had been spread over an area of 7,000 hectares by 2014, it has been reduced up to 2,000 hectares by 2017 due to the price changes that occurred in the market and the climatic conditions. However, the Government has focused its attention on matters such as the inability of marketing the big onion seeds of farmers, the prevention of the farmers refraining from the cultivation of big onion and safeguarding of the local seed producers. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Mahinda Amaraweera, the Minister of Agriculture, to purchase 5,000 kgs. of seeds from the seed stocks available with the local big onion seed producers and cultivate newly 1,000 hectares of lands during the Yala season of 2018, for the Government to purchase a further 2,000 kgs. of big onion seeds and stock them for the seed requirement in the next season, to intervene in securing a price of Rs.70/- to Rs.80/- per kilograms to the local producers and to revise the import taxes accordingly, was approved by the Cabinet.