The Hon. Namal Karunaratne
Namal Karunaratne said imported substandard produce, including pepper, had allegedly been mixed or re-exported as Sri Lankan goods, undermining farmers’ prices and damaging Sri Lanka’s export crop brand in markets such as India. He referred to past campaigns and discussions on the issue, and said the relevant Department is now under his Ministry, which is taking phased action against fraud, corruption and malpractice. He stated that the Government intends to reform the system and develop export crops to increase foreign exchange earnings.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 This is an important question. A former Agriculture Minister told me after a discussion at Rajagiriya that Indonesian pepper was being exchanged and re-exported as “Made in Sri Lanka” without even entering port. We discussed with Ministers and campaigned, including in Middeniya and elsewhere, against these injustices to farmers. The key issue was importing substandard foreign produce, mixing and re-exporting, which crashed prices—sometimes halving—for crops like cloves, pepper, cinnamon, damaging our brand and exhausting import quotas in markets like India with poor quality goods. We have studied this thoroughly. The Department is now under our Ministry; we are acting to change this situation and we will change it. We will develop export crops to earn substantial dollars, and we are already intervening step by step against fraud, corruption and malpractice.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 6 August 2025 ·No. 1755159820030645 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Namal Karunaratne. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 6 August 2025. No. 1755159820030645. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/17103