SL Teas Must Meet The Challenges Of Stringent Quality
Rohan Fernando
Hon. Minister of Plantation Industries, Mr. Mahinda Samarasinghe, Hon. Deputy Minister of Plantations, Mr. Earl Gunesekera, Secretary, Ministry of Plantation Industries Mrs. Sudharma Karunaratne, Chairperson Sri Lanka Tea Board, Mrs. Janaki Kuruppu, Vice President TEA – Mr. Anslem Perera, Vice President TEA – Mr. Jayantha Karunaratne, Secretary General TEA – Mr. Niraj De Mel, Hon Deputy Ministers, Members of Parliament, Secretaries, Distinguished invitees, ladies and gentlemen.
Firstly, it is my great pleasure and honour to inform that His Excellency the President will join us shortly to be with the members. It’s a rare occasion when a President of a country accepts an invitation to attend an Annual General Meeting. We welcome His Excellency’s decision and take pride in the belief that his decision to grace this occasion would be because our Trade is an important one for the country.
The TEA or the Tea Exporters Association of Sri Lanka was activated by a few exporters in 1999 to address specific issues inhibiting growth of the tea export sector, later expanded to incorporate a majority of active exporters from this country and today it is a strong organization working towards a common goal of improving the tea export sector whilst maintaining cordial relationships with the plantation companies, tea small holders, tea factory owners and the brokers. Member companies of the TEA account for around 87% of the total tea exports in terms of volume and value. The strategy, the Tea Exporters Association put forward 10 years ago to expand the export revenue from 750 million dollars to surpass the 1 billion dollars per annum was readily accepted and mentioned in the budget of 2000 ,recognizing for the first time the importance of value addition through indigenous branding. The strategy document submitted that time also stressed on R&D, backward integration to the tea farmer, introduction of specific curriculum in the universities directly related to the tea industry and induction of latest technologies at factory level to improve quality and product efficiency.
We are glad that some of those proposals are now being implemented,despite there being a few awaiting implementation. Today we are happy to note that the export earnings from tea exceed 1.4 billion USD and this is now considered as the minimum revenue target for our industry. It is our intention and desire to drive this particular segment of the tea industry to reach 5 billion dollars by 2020 and support the government’s ambitious target of export revenue expanding to 20 billion USD by this time.Read More
