The Hon. K.V. Samantha Viddyarathna - Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure
The Minister stated that underutilized estate lands should be used to meet national economic and social needs, including raising made tea production to 400 million kg and export earnings to USD 2.5 billion by 2030. He said the Government would prioritize appropriate cultivation on such lands while protecting natural forests, removing invasive species, and aligning estate land use with Environment Ministry policies promoting indigenous forest cover.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Underutilized lands must serve national economic and social needs. Our targets include increasing made tea production from 262 million kg in 2024 to 400 million kg by 2030 and export earnings from USD 1.4 billion to USD 2.5 billion. Hence, bringing underutilized lands into appropriate crops is a priority.
¶ 02 We protect natural forests via the Forest and Wildlife Departments. Regarding invasives, government policy is to remove them. Some timber plantations exist to meet fuelwood needs of the tea industry and for company timber sales. The Environment Ministry’s policy is to encourage indigenous forest cover. We will align with these policies while optimizing estate land use.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 18 February 2026 ·No. 23308 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. K.V. Samantha Viddyarathna - Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 18 February 2026. No. 23308. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/20233