The Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe - Minister
Plans are underway to establish 150 new Sathosa outlets this year and expand the network from about 450 to 1,000 outlets within three years, including through large, medium, regular and franchise-type small outlets where viable. The Minister also said recruitment and training will resume for the Department of Co-operative Development, which had previously been earmarked for closure, with efforts to strengthen cooperative banks and consumer societies and integrate them into the national retail network while safeguarding depositors.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Member, regarding your point that there are only three Sathosa outlets in that district, we are planning to establish 150 new Sathosa outlets this year. Where conditions are suitable and a viable outlet can be run, we are ready to proceed quickly, including large, medium, regular and franchise-type small outlets—four tiers. We plan to grow from about 450 outlets to 1,000 within three years, including in your district.
¶ 02 On the Department of Co-operative Development staffing: this Department had been earmarked for closure previously, which hindered recruitment. We will now recruit staff, train them appropriately, strengthen cooperative banks and consumer societies, and integrate them into our national retail network. We will also train cooperative staff to ensure depositor safety. Thank you for raising these points.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 19 March 2025 ·No. 1748499233099643 ·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/25251
Cite as: The Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe - Minister. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 19 March 2025. No. 1748499233099643. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/25251