The Hon. K.V. Samantha Viddyarathna - Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure
The Minister stated that the Tea Shakthi Fund was established in 2000 under Act No. 47 of 2000 and currently has about 140,000 members, including 94,425 share members. As of 1 February 2025, the Fund held Rs. 451.85 million in fixed deposits and bank balances. Planned uses include settling Rs. 208 million in shareholder liabilities, maintaining a Rs. 135 million welfare insurance fund for small tea holders, releasing Rs. 33 million in retained initial deposits when needed, and seeking Cabinet approval for concessional revolving credit schemes for tea replanting.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, the answer is as follows:
¶ 02 (a) (i) The Tea Shakthi Fund was established in the year 2000 under the Tea Shakthi Fund Act, No. 47 of 2000. (ii) There are about 140,000 Tea Shakthi members; of them, 94,425 are Tea Shakthi share members. (iii) As at 01.02.2025, the Fund position was: - Fixed deposits: Rs. 439,133,111.00 - Bank balances: Rs. 12,714,506.31 Total: Rs. 451,847,617.31 (iv) Planned use of funds includes: - Releasing share liabilities of Tea Shakthi shareholders amounting to Rs. 208 million. - Maintaining uninterrupted the welfare insurance scheme for small tea holders by building up the Tea Shakthi Welfare Insurance Fund amounting to Rs. 135 million. - Releasing initial deposits retained by Tea Shakthi buyers/management agents amounting to Rs. 33 million, when necessary. - Seeking Cabinet approval to implement revolving credit schemes at concessional interest rates for tea replanting, based on proposals submitted by small tea holders.
¶ 03 (b) Not applicable.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Monday, 17 March 2025 ·No. 1745486934006324 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/12680
Cite as: The Hon. K.V. Samantha Viddyarathna - Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 17 March 2025. No. 1745486934006324. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/12680