19 October 2020 12:54 am Views - 1899
Sri Lanka produced a record paddy harvest in 2020 as both cultivation seasons gave a bumper crop as favourable weather, robust policy assistance and assurance of guaranteed prices gave hope and certainty to the farming community to cultivate a larger extent of paddy land than they did three years ago.
As a result, in the latest concluded Yala season, Sri Lanka’s paddy farmers generated a record 1,840 million metric tonnes of paddy, the highest since 2015, and sufficient for five months of consumption, the latest data showed.
This paddy harvest is after accounting for crop losses.
This together with the bumper harvest in the Maha season, which had a yield of 3,051 million metric tonnes, Sri Lanka produced a total of 4,894 million metric tonnes of paddy in 2020, the highest paddy yield in any recent year.
This is in comparison to the 4,616 million metric tonnes of paddy harvest in 2019 and 2,383-million paddy harvest in 2017.
The government, in expectation of a bumper paddy harvest in the Yala season released Rs.10.4 billion to the State-owned Paddy Marketing Board in July to buy 200,000 metric tonnes of paddy from farmers at Rs.50 a kilogram.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the target set for the Yala 2020 season was 482,408 hectares of paddy, with the sown extent reported at the end of August been 465,191 hectares, a 96 percent achievement from the target.
More significantly this is 39 percent higher than the average extent of sown area in the last three Yala seasons, which was 333,885 hectares.
“Cultivation targets have almost been realised at Mahaweli system, Kalutara, Gampaha, Colombo, Rathnapura, Kandy, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Mannar, Batticaloa and Galle,” the Department said.
Meanwhile, 4, 214 hectares of total paddy damages were reported—1, 434 from Ampara and 1, 420 hectares from Trincomalee— due to pest and drought and the total production loss was estimated at
7, 473 metric tonnes.
Sri Lanka reported 4.1 percent inflation under Colombo Consumer Price Index for September on food prices, pressured by the increases in coconut and vegetable prices, but the price of rice remained broadly benign in the recent past.
The Central Bank expects its inflation to remain subdued at the mid single digit levels of 4 to 6 percent through mid-2022 except in the case of a significant supply shock.